A replacement of human animators with AI avatars
Polish public radio station Off Radio Krakow therefore sparked a media storm in the country by replacing its hosts with versions generated by artificial intelligence. To attract a young audience, management introduced three fictional presenters – Emilia, Jakub and Alex – avatars of Generation Z, with biographies and photos created by AI. The controversy came to a head when the station aired a fake interview with Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska, who died in 2012. This simulation, although technically successful, deeply shocked the former host Lukasz Zaleski and some of the listenersand sparked a heated controversy on social networks and in local media.
Audience increase and harsh criticism
The initiative initially helped increase the station’s audience from almost zero to more than 8,000 listeners. But this enthusiasm was accompanied by an avalanche of criticism. The public denounced the substitution of human voices with digital creations, seeing it as an attack on authenticity and journalistic ethics. The Minister of Digitalization, Krzysztof Gawkowski, expressed reservations, believing that the use of AI in the media should be regulated to protect jobs and avoid abuses. This position reflects the concern of political leaders about the consequences of AI on human work, particularly in cultural content.
Management justifies itself
To set up this experience, the station relied on advanced AI technologies: ChatGPT from OpenAI, speech synthesis software from ElevenLabs and the Leonardo.Ai image generator. The director of Radio Krakow, Mariusz Marcin Pulit, defended this approach, explaining that it was mainly aimed at revitalizing a station losing audience. According to him, it was less about replacing humans and more about raising public awareness of the potential of AI. The statement comes as the Polish Parliament considers new regulations on the use of AI in the media.
An interrupted experience
Under pressure, the station ultimately discontinued the experiment, replacing the AI hosts with Music shows performed by human artists. But the affair opened a debate in Poland on the future of creative professions in the face of advances in AI. For professionals like Lukasz Zaleski, choosing an AI to host interviews, even fictitious ones, represents a loss for the quality of cultural content and a threat to authenticity.
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