Polish Radio Station Abandons use of AI ‘Presenters’ Following Outcry
By Vanessa Gera
AI Artificial Intelligence Security Sentinel Password Cyber Security Ransomware Email Phishing Encrypted Technology, Digital Information Protected Secured Lock
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A Polish radio station said Monday that it has ended an “experiment” that involved using AI-generated “presenters” instead of real journalists after the move sparked an outcry.
Weeks after dismissing its journalists, OFF Radio Krakow relaunched last week using virtual characters created by AI as its presenters.
Across Poland, people were angry, expressing fears that humans were being replaced by AI.
The station's editor, Marcin Pulit, said in a statement Monday that the aim had been to spark a debate about artificial intelligence, and that it had succeeded. He said the experiment had been meant to last three months but that it saw no reason to go on.
“After a week, we had collected so many observations, opinions, and conclusions that we decided that its continuation was pointless,” Pulit wrote.
He said the station was “surprised by the level of emotion that accompanied this experiment, attributing to us non-existent intentions and actions, harsh judgments formulated on the basis of false reports.”
The station in the southern city of Krakow had said its avatars were designed to reach younger listeners by speaking about cultural, art and social issues including the concerns of LGBTQ+ people.
The change last week got nationwide attention after Mateusz Demski, a journalist and film critic who until recently hosted a show on the station, launched a petition calling for the station to end the experiment and published an open letter 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 23,000 signed the petition.
Last Tuesday the station broadcast an “interview” conducted by an AI-generated presenter with a voice pretending to be Wisława Szymborska, a Polish poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature who died in 2012.
Before canceling the experiment, the station had been planning an interview with Polish statesman Józef Piłsudski, who died in 1935.
Apple has taken down an app that uses crowdsourcing to flag sightings of U.S. immigration agents after coming under pressure from the Trump administration.
Former Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers learned all about technology’s volatile highs and lows as a veteran of the internet’s early boom days during the late 1990s and the ensuing meltdown that followed the mania. And now he is seeing potential signs of the cycle repeating with another transformative technology in artificial intelligence. Chambers is trying take some of the lessons he learned while riding a wave that turned Cisco into the world's most valuable company in 2000 before a crash hammered its stock price and apply them as an investor in AI startups. He recently discussed AI's promise and perils during an interview with The Associated Press.
Tesla reported a surprise increase in sales in the third quarter as the electric car maker likely benefited from a rush by consumers to take advantage of a $7,500 credit before it expired on Sept. 30. The company reported Thursday that sales in the three months through September rose 7% compared to the same period a year ago. The gain follows two quarters of steep declines as people turned off by CEO Elon Musk’s foray into right-wing politics avoided buying his company’s cars and even protested at some dealerships. Sales rose to 497,099 vehicles, compared with 462,890 in the same period last year.
OpenAI could now be the world’s most valuable startup, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok parent company ByteDance, after a secondary stock sale designed to retain employees at the ChatGPT maker. Current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in shares to a group of investors, pushing the privately held artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $500 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The valuation reflects high expectations for the future of AI technology and continues OpenAI’s remarkable trajectory from its start as a nonprofit research lab in 2015.
Tom’s Guide Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer breaks down Apple & Amazon's latest product drops—what's hot, what's hype, and what really matters for users.
