{"id":139870,"date":"2025-11-14T18:30:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T18:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/139870\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T18:30:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T18:30:12","slug":"ai-djs-are-changing-the-voice-of-local-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/139870\/","title":{"rendered":"AI DJs Are Changing the Voice of Local Radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWith her nose ring, blue hair streaks, and tattoos that extend from her shoulders to her fingertips, DJ Tori is, in the words of her boss, \u201cevery guy\u2019s fantasy of what a rock chick would look like.\u201d In that regard, she\u2019s the logical personality to crank Pearl Jam, Shinedown, or Stabbing Westward songs during her overnight and weekend shifts at a hard-rock radio<\/a> station in Hiawatha, Iowa.<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery so often, Tori will mispronounce the name of the vintage alt-rock band Live \u2014 so that it rhymes with \u201cgive\u201d \u2014 or talk about a pairing of artists and say \u201cfeat\u201d instead of \u201cfeaturing.\u201d But her listeners and her station, KFMW Rock 108, just roll with it, since DJ Tori isn\u2019t likely to get fired anytime soon. From her image to her voice, she\u2019s an entirely AI creation.<\/p>\n

\n\tAI continues to infiltrate the music business: Fake photos<\/a> of aging rockers in hospitals flood Facebook, artificial bands like Velvet Sundown<\/a> are streaming on Spotify, and a computer-generated R&B artist, Xania Monet, has a song that\u2019s charting. Radio \u2014 especially nonsatellite terrestrial stations in whatever city or town you live \u2014 is now becoming the next artificial frontier. And depending on whom you ask, AI radio will either ramp up the wattage in a struggling medium or imperil jobs, livelihoods, and the long-standing rapport between listeners and DJs. \u201cThe one thing they haven\u2019t straightened out is the cadence and how we speak,\u201d says Frankie Ross, a longtime DJ currently at the Wave in Los Angeles. \u201cBut AI is learning every day, and once they get that worked out, there will be a lot of people out of work long term. It may come down to all the DJs on the air will be AI jocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDJ Tori, which launched last year, is just one of many examples of the way AI has begun creeping into radio or radio-like sites. On Spotify, DJ X roams your queue and compiles playlists and patter aimed at your listening habits. Last year, Will.i.am launched RAiDiO.FYI, an interactive app with 10 music channels and AI hosts who can \u201cconverse\u201d with listeners on a variety of topics. \u201cI don\u2019t want to render radio obsolete, because you still need traditional radio,\u201d Will.i.am tells Rolling Stone. \u201cWe still need humans telling human stories. We still need improv and human banter on what\u2019s happening in a city. But you also need the new. On traditional radio, one person could talk to the host at a time. With our radio, you can have 1,000 conversations at the same time about one segment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month, radio industry veterans announced the startup of SonicTrek.ai, where AI versions of genre experts will play and talk about classic rock, country, alternative rock, or current hits, with geographically oriented playlists to boot. Those hosts\u2019 voices will also chat about local weather and businesses. \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to pull the wool over anybody\u2019s eyes,\u201d says SonicTrek.ai co-founder Mike Agovino. \u201cWe wear AI on the sleeve from the get-go. We will deliver talent and content that can interact with listeners on a one-to-one basis, and do it 24\/7, 365 days a year, with unlimited endurance. You could never do that with live air talent. You could never have the audience interacting all day long, talking about artists, eras of music, best albums ever, whatever the topic or format might be. That\u2019s an element radio has really lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the past few decades, the once-mighty radio world has increasingly had to deal with declining revenue,\u00a0layoffs (at leading companies like iHeartRadio and Audacy), and the advent of voice tracking, in which DJs in one city pretape segments in another, thus saving the companies dollars. The advent of AI has rattled the radio community even further. In a document shared with Rolling Stone, Audacy \u2014 which owns more than 200 stations around the country \u2014 asked an undetermined number of on-air employees to sign a contract that would give the company the rights, \u201cin perpetuity,\u201d to create \u201ca computer-generated electronic representation or digital replica that is readily identifiable as the voice or visual likeness of Employee,\u201d among other things. Audacy declined to comment, but according to a source close to the situation, it is \u201cnot the company\u2019s policy to clone or replicate a talent\u2019s voice without their permission, and the company has no plans to do so without their specific permission.\u201d (SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents disc jockeys as well as actors, singers, dancers, and other performing professionals, declined comment on the matter.)<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tAI is \u201cgimmicky right now, but it\u2019s on its way to becoming a threat,\u201d says one veteran DJ who, like many contacted by Rolling Stone, would only speak anonymously for fear of reprisals. \u201cUntil people start legitimately losing jobs, they\u2019re just putting it in the background of their minds. But when you focus on it, it\u2019s really scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSEVERAL YEARS AGO, HUDSON HOTT, then a leading DJ at the L.A. rock station Alt 98.7, received an unsolicited letter offering to turn her personality and traits into AI versions. She never followed up, but others saw the potential. The generally acknowledged first AI DJ launched two years ago, when Ashley Elzinga, a jock at a station in Traverse City, Michigan, was approached about replicating her voice with AI for KBFF in Portland, Oregon. After being reassured that the technology wasn\u2019t meant to replace her \u2014 \u201cit was just meant to enhance what we were doing,\u201d she says \u2014 Elzinga signed on.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the help of RadioGPT from Futuri, a leading AI content company, Elzinga began reading prompts and was asked questions by the company\u2019s software. \u201cIt was kind of intense,\u201d she says. \u201cIt wanted to hear the inflection of my voice and my personality, and it started to generate who I was. From there, it was about fine-tuning each inflection and how I say words. My first reaction was, \u2018Why does it sound like that?\u2019 And they had to tell me, \u2018You have a Michigan accent.\u2019 It was a bit of a shock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAI Ashley<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen AI Ashley debuted in the summer of 2023 \u2014 during a midday show, with both the real and AI Elzinga sometimes on the air at the same time \u2014 Elzinga says she knew she might get \u201cbloodied up\u201d as the first pioneer, and she wasn\u2019t wrong. \u201cYou can\u2019t replicate the human touch and spontaneity,\u201d says Hott. \u201cWhen I was doing my show in Los Angeles and we had an earthquake, I was live on the air, and the building was shaking and I\u2019m screaming. For anyone driving in their car, we were all experiencing that together. AI Ashley is going to keep talking.\u201d But when AI Ashley gave away tickets to a Portland concert, those tuning in didn\u2019t seem to mind. \u201cThey were excited, like they were talking to a radio personality,\u201d says Elzinga. \u201cThey were like, \u2018I got through and won something.\u2019 They thought it was cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe same company that worked on AI Ashley also reached out to Russ Mottla, program director at Iowa\u2019s KFMW Rock 108, who was intrigued and heard a sample of how\u00a0a female AI jock could sound. \u201cThe first attempts were awful,\u201d he says. \u201cShe was very robotic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut after some tweaks, DJ Tori \u2014 name courtesy of Mottla \u2014 improved and premiered last year, spewing factoids about bands and records and spouting saucy banter. \u201cI wasn\u2019t delusional about it,\u201d Mottla says. \u201cIs it ready to be prime time? It\u2019s not. But it gave us the opportunity to talk about something everybody\u2019s talking about \u2014 \u2018We have an AI DJ too\u2019 \u2014 and make promos making fun of her. As far as our audience is concerned, we\u2019re on a new trend. Some people like it. Some people don\u2019t. But we\u2019re claiming the position, as they say.\u201d A local gun shop, Midwest Shooting, became an on-air sponsor and even hosted an appearance by DJ Tori in the store \u2014 a photo of \u201cher\u201d attached to a mannequin. As Mottla insists, \u201cWe\u2019re not hiding anything from the audience. We\u2019re having fun with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn their defense, those who\u2019ve turned to AI or are experimenting with it on radio argue that it\u2019s a remedy for companies and stations that use pretaped or syndicated shows during off hours or can\u2019t afford overnight DJs. Before DJ Tori took over \u201cher\u201d slot, that time period on Rock 108 featured music and commercials but no DJ. \u201cThere are fewer and fewer shifts done live,\u201d says veteran New York-area DJ Dennis Elsas, who hosts shows on SiriusXM and WFUV, a noncommercial public station. \u201cMore often than not, the overnight time after midnight is pretaped.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSonicTrek.ai\u2019s Agovino insist his fledgling company\u2019s goal, once it gets up and running, isn\u2019t to \u201creplace the successful midday jock\u201d but to instead focus on local stations in smaller markets that use satellite feeds or voice tracking to fill up their airtime. \u201cWe built this as a strategy for radio stations that have, for whatever their rationale was at the time, drifted away from live and local,\u201d he says. But says another longtime DJ who spoke anonymously in response to SonicTrek\u2019s plans, \u201cSmaller cities do use syndicated programs or don\u2019t have anyone new to do [shifts], so that\u2019s not new. But as the technology improves and as the standards lower over time, we\u2019re not far away from something like that being on major stations. It\u2019s very upsetting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey should be freaked out,\u201d Will.i.am says of those in radio who fear the coming of AI. \u201cBecause if AI is doing something that a human can do, then why does that have to exist? Only use AI with traditional radio if you cannot execute it with humans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time, others in the industry feel that concerns about the death of the traditional human DJ are premature. \u201cThe audience is way more perceptive about subtle changes in personality than you might think,\u201d says talent agent Paul Anderson of Workhouse Media, which represents numerous podcast and radio hosts. \u201cPeople develop real relationships with their favorite personalities. And when you spend multiple hours a day listening to them while stuck in traffic, you can pick up on all those subtle intonations. If people find out that the storytelling is being done by an AI bot trying to replicate a known personality, the whole thing will fall apart.\u201d Even Mottla, DJ Tori\u2019s human boss, acknowledges that: \u201cI can see the guys in the corner offices drooling over this, but people bond with DJs. You can\u2019t create that with AI.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tSome in the radio world took comfort when AI Ashley was yanked from the air earlier this year. According to Dylan Salisbury, the Portland program director overseeing the project at the time, AI Ashley didn\u2019t result in \u201cany dramatic lifts or decreases\u201d in ratings. But he felt the time had come to wrap it up after two years. \u201cI think the experiment ran its course,\u201d says Salisbury. \u201cWe put it on the air, we were called every name under the sun and stood by what we did, and we got our peers [other stations] to buy into it, at least in some form. I\u2019m glad we tried it. But I don\u2019t know if, moving forward, an AI DJ is going to have a place on radio. As a society, we like AI but not when it comes to human connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen again, no one denies how fast the technology is moving, and how \u201cmuch more likelife,\u201d in Agovino\u2019s words, AI voices now sound. That applies to DJ Tori too. \u201cShe sounds so much better now than when she first started,\u201d Mottla says. \u201cIf they can make this kind of progress in 24 months, I can\u2019t imagine what it\u2019s going to be like in another two years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With her nose ring, blue hair streaks, and tattoos that extend from her shoulders to her fingertips, DJ…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[4311,218,93,61,60,278,700],"class_list":{"0":"post-139870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-a-i","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-radio"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}