Polish radio station replaces journalists with AI ‘hosts’

A Polish radio station has sparked controversy after it sacked its journalists and relaunched with AI-generated “hosts”.

Weeks after freeing its journalists, OFF Radio Krakow relaunched this week, saying it was “Poland’s first experiment 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 talking about cultural, artistic 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,” station manager Marcin Pulit wrote in a statement. On Tuesday, the station aired an “interview” conducted by an AI-generated host with a voice pretending to be Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner for literature who died in 2012.

The change drew national attention after Mateusz Demski, a journalist and film critic who until recently hosted a show on the station, published an open letter on Tuesday protesting the “replacement of employees with artificial intelligence”.

“This is a dangerous precedent that affects us all,” he wrote, and argued that it could open the way “to a world where experienced workers associated with the media sector for years and people employed in the creative industries will be replaced by machines’. More than 15,000 people had signed the petition by Wednesday morning, Mr. Demski said. He said the move was particularly shocking as the broadcaster was a taxpayer-supported public broadcaster. Mr Pulit insisted that no journalist had been fired because of AI, but because his listenership “was close to zero”.

Krzysztof Gawkowski, the digital affairs minister and deputy prime minister, intervened on Tuesday, saying he had read Mr Demski’s call and that legislation was needed to regulate AI.