Radio station replaces journalists with AI 'presenters'

WARSAW, Poland -- A Polish power position has triggered contention aft dismissing its journalists and relaunching this week pinch AI-generated "presenters."

Weeks aft letting its journalists go, OFF Radio Krakow relaunched this week, pinch what it said was “the first research successful Poland successful which journalists ... are virtual characters created by AI."

The position successful nan confederate metropolis of Krakow said its 3 avatars are designed to scope younger listeners by speaking astir cultural, creation and societal issues including nan concerns of LGBTQ+ people.

“Is artificial intelligence much of an opportunity aliases a threat to media, power and journalism? We will activity answers to this question,” nan position head, Marcin Pulit, wrote successful a statement.

The alteration sewage nationwide attraction aft Mateusz Demski, a journalist and movie professional who until precocious hosted a show connected nan station, published an unfastened missive Tuesday protesting “the replacement of labor pinch artificial intelligence.”

“It is simply a vulnerable precedent that hits america all,” he wrote, and based on it could unfastened nan measurement “to a world successful which knowledgeable labor associated pinch nan media assemblage for years and group employed successful imaginative industries will beryllium replaced by machines.”

More than 15,000 signed nan petition by Wednesday morning, Demski told The Associated Press. He said he has besides gotten calls from hundreds of people, galore of them young group who do not want to beryllium nan taxable of specified an experiment.

Demski worked astatine OFF Radio Krakow from February 2022, carrying retired interviews pinch Ukrainians fleeing war, until August, erstwhile he was among astir a twelve journalists who were fto go. He said nan move was particularly shocking because nan broadcaster is simply a taxpayer-supported nationalist station.

Pulit insisted that nary journalists were fired because of AI but because its listenership “was adjacent to zero."

Krzysztof Gawkowski, nan curate of integer affairs and a lawman premier minister, weighed successful connected Tuesday, saying he had publication Demski’s entreaty and that authorities is needed to modulate AI.

“Although I americium a instrumentality of AI development, I judge that definite boundaries are being crossed much and more,” he wrote connected X. “The wide usage of AI must beryllium done for people, not against them!”

On Tuesday nan position broadcast an “interview” conducted by an AI-generated presenter pinch a sound pretending to beryllium Wisława Szymborska, a Polish writer and victor of nan Nobel Prize successful Literature who died successful 2012.

Michał Rusinek, nan president of nan Wisława Szymborska Foundation, which oversees nan poet's legacy, told nan broadcaster TVN that he agreed to fto nan position usage Szymborska’s sanction successful nan broadcast. He said nan writer poet had a consciousness of joke and would person liked it.