Polish radio station replaces journalists with AI 'presenters'
Weeks after letting its journalists go, OFF Radio Krakow relaunched this week, with what it said was “the first experiment in Poland in which journalists...are virtual characters created by AI"
AP
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Pulit insisted that no journalists were fired because of AI but because its listenership “was close to zero".PHOTO:
Warsaw, 23 Oct
A Polish
radio station has triggered controversy after dismissing its journalists and
relaunching this week with AI-generated "presenters".
Weeks after
letting its journalists go, OFF Radio Krakow relaunched this week, with what it
said was “the first experiment in Poland in which journalists...are virtual
characters created by AI".
The station
in the southern city of Krakow said its three avatars are designed to reach
younger listeners by speaking about cultural, art and social issues including
the concerns of LGBTQ+ people.
“Is
artificial intelligence more of an opportunity or a threat to media, radio and
journalism? We will seek answers to this question,” the station head, Marcin
Pulit, wrote in a statement.
The change
got nationwide attention after Mateusz Demski, a journalist and film critic who
until recently hosted a show on the station, published an open letter Tuesday
protesting “the replacement of employees with artificial intelligence”.
“It is a
dangerous precedent that hits us all,” he wrote, and argued it could open the
way “to a world in which experienced employees associated with the media sector
for years and people employed in creative industries will be replaced by
machines”.
More than
15,000 signed the petition by Wednesday morning, Demski told The Associated
Press. He said he has also gotten calls from hundreds of people, many of them
young people who do not want to be the subject of such an experiment.
Demski
worked at OFF Radio Krakow from February 2022, carrying out interviews with
Ukrainians fleeing war, until August, when he was among about a dozen
journalists who were let go. He said the move was especially shocking because
the broadcaster is a taxpayer-supported public station.
Pulit
insisted that no journalists were fired because of AI but because its
listenership “was close to zero".
On Tuesday
the station broadcast an “interview” conducted by an AI-generated presenter
with a voice pretending to be Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish poet and winner of
the Nobel Prize in Literature who died in 2012.
Krzysztof
Gawkowski, the minister of digital affairs and a deputy prime minister, weighed
in on Tuesday, saying he had read Demski's story and that legislation is needed
to regulate AI.
“Although I
am a fan of AI development, I believe that certain boundaries are being crossed
more and more,” he wrote on X. "The widespread use of AI must be done for
people, not against them!”-AP
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