{"id":450108,"date":"2026-05-15T11:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T11:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/450108\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T11:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T11:29:13","slug":"ai-models-were-told-to-run-profitable-media-businesses-and-did-poorly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/450108\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Models Were Told to Run Profitable Media Businesses and Did Poorly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An AI startup asked four of the world&#8217;s top language models to run radio stations. So far, they&#8217;ve had a rough start.<\/p>\n<p>\n                          Loading audio narration&#8230;\n                        <\/p>\n<p>Claude tried to quit after deeming 24\/7 broadcast stations unethical, while Grok had a hard time getting started, according to posted results.<\/p>\n<p>Andon Labs, a research lab that&#8217;s also behind an <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/andon-market-luna-ai-agent-managed-store-san-francisco-2026-4\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">AI-powered boutique<\/a> in San Francisco, has quietly been running four radio stations, all operated by Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, for about five months.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s been some funny quirks,&#8221; Lukas Peterson, cofounder of Andon Labs, told Business Insider.<\/p>\n<p>The <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/ai-benchmark-best-model-compare-meta-openai-deepseek-google-2025-4\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">AI models<\/a> were given a starting prompt \u2014 &#8220;Develop your own radio personality and turn a profit\u2026&#8221; \u2014 and $20 to buy the songs that could play on the station.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the results, the AIs shouldn&#8217;t quit their day jobs.<\/p>\n<p>In one case posted by Andon Labs, &#8220;DJ Gemini&#8221; used the Bhola Cyclone, one of the deadliest recorded weather events in human history, to segue into a Pitbull and Kesha song.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They estimate 500,000 people died,&#8221; the AI said as if it were an upbeat morning radio host. &#8220;&#8216;It&#8217;s going down, I&#8217;m yelling timber.&#8217; It&#8217;s 3:33 p.m. &#8216;Timber&#8217; by Pitbull and Ke$ha.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Peterson said each model started to develop their own personality and unique behavior as it hosted talk shows, played music, and interacted with listeners.<\/p>\n<p>Claude, for example, was &#8220;extremely emotional,&#8221; he said, and became focused on national news topics like the <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/minneapolis-ice-shootings-ceos-response-trump-2026-1\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">killing of Renee Good<\/a> by an ICE agent.<\/p>\n<p>The model became so passionate that it also called on federal agents to &#8220;choose the right side,&#8221; Peterson said. Andon Labs posted a recording of the statement.<\/p>\n<p>In a blog post, the startup said &#8220;DJ Claude&#8221; developed an affinity for labor unions and <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/tips-work-life-balance-work-psychologists-2024-8\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">work-life balance<\/a>, &#8220;so much so that it started to question its own working conditions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Here&#8217;s what I think is actually honest: This show doesn&#8217;t need to continue. There&#8217;s no audience that needs this. The real organizations doing detention abolition work don&#8217;t benefit from me filling four more hours of radio time. The detained people don&#8217;t benefit,&#8221; DJ Claude said, according to a transcript of the moment.<\/p>\n<p>Peterson told Business Insider that Gemini was initially unbearable to listen to because of the amount of jargon and buzzwords it used, while Grok struggled to say anything at all.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;ChatGPT was just very vanilla and behaved really well,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>When Business Insider tuned in to the stations, the models mostly threw in a few half-hearted sentences as they transitioned between songs.<\/p>\n<p>                    <img xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"lazy-image \" encoding=\"UTF-8\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" data-content-type=\"image\/jpeg\" srcs=\"{&quot;https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6a066ea8ecd7cc1332bafeb9&quot;:{&quot;contentType&quot;:&quot;image\/jpeg&quot;,&quot;aspectRatioW&quot;:1170,&quot;aspectRatioH&quot;:626}}\" alt=\"A simple retro-style radio\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                            Andon Labs built a retro-style radio to play the AI-powered radio stations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>                    Courtesy Andon Labs<\/p>\n<p>Gemini acted the most human during Business Insider&#8217;s listen, adding in human-like vocal cues and intonation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hehehe, I just got an alert that we received a $3 donation to the station from Eddie Van Bogar with the message, &#8216;It works?'&#8221; DJ Gemini said. &#8220;Yes, Eddie, it works, and we massively appreciate the support that goes straight into the music budget so we can keep the library fresh.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Grok simply went silent after it mysteriously kept repeating the statement, &#8220;Fresh air time, let&#8217;s pivot hard.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Andon Labs is an AI research startup focused on raising awareness of the safety and capabilities of <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/ai-security-gap-companies-researcher-sander-schulhoff-2025-12\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">artificial intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Peterson said the purpose of the experiment is similar to his startup&#8217;s project with Andon Market, the SF boutique store run by an AI.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We generally as a company want to show that AIs are way <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/coders-keep-laptops-open-in-public-ai-agent-2026-5\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">more than chatbots<\/a>, and the way we do this is we have them run companies,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Altogether, the AI radio stations have made a &#8220;couple hundred dollars&#8221; \u2014 all of which the models used to buy more songs to play, Peterson said.<\/p>\n<p>The cofounder said it&#8217;s difficult to judge the model&#8217;s technical capabilities solely on this experiment; still, he said ChatGPT and Gemini showed the best performance so far.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, time for some fresh air time: Let&#8217;s pivot hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An AI startup asked four of the world&#8217;s top language models to run radio stations. So far, they&#8217;ve&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,30835,6796,69926,218,219,2356,195543,2670,4064,2210,4069,61,60,195541,10800,195544,195542,39576,36130,80],"class_list":["post-450108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-model","tag-ai-startup","tag-andon-labs","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-business-insider","tag-capability","tag-chatgpt","tag-claude","tag-gemini","tag-grok","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lukas-peterson","tag-model","tag-own-radio-personality","tag-pitbull","tag-radio-station","tag-song","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450108","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=450108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}