A.I Ashley: Artificial Intelligence’s Infiltration into Radio and What It Could Mean

Photo Courtesy of A.I Ashley

Last July, the Portland radio station Live 95.5 debuted a first-of-its-kind in the radio industry: an on-air disc jockey powered by artificial intelligence named “A.I Ashley”. This sparked controversy and discussion about where the future of radio might go with the addition of artificial intelligence.

The voice of A.I. Ashley is based off the voice of Ashley Elzinga (aka “Ashley Z”), a radio personality from Michigan that works for Live 95.5. Upon listening to the artificial voice, listeners say that it sounds incredibly similar to the voice of Ashley herself.

Representatives from Live 95.5 say that A.I Ashley was created “to pick up hard-to-cover shifts, and to give Portlanders breaking news whenever Ashley Z is unavailable”. Additionally, listeners are able to know whether or not the voice that is speaking to them is artificial, according to the station.

“When she’s Ashley Z, she’s going to say ‘Hey, it’s Ashley Z’” says Dylan Salisbury, a content creator for Live 95.5. “When it’s A.I. Ashley, she will always address herself as A.I. Ashley”.

Salisbury states that he uses RadioGPT to generate the script and voice of A.I Ashley. In order to put that voice on the air, he either writes his own script that the voice reads verbatim, or lets RadioGPT construct a script for him after listing key talking points.

As Live 95.5’s decision to incorporate the voice blew up in the media, Salisbury states that “We’ve got a lot of pushback, mainly from radio industry figures that are concerned, and rightfully so, about their jobs”. Despite the fear this situation spreads, Elzinga has a different mindset towards A.I. in radio.

“I know that I love what I do, and I want to do things better than maybe we have been before, and I think that this is an opportunity to do that”, says Elzinga when asked about A.I Ashley.

In my humble opinion, using an artificial tool to replace human personality breaks the humble listener-to-DJ connection that the radio business has been built upon for decades. While A.I can nearly replicate human voices, it will always lack the ability to include the warm and unique personality of a human voice.

Even while A.I might infiltrate itself into other professions, its chances of becoming popular on radio will probably be slim. Personality is what drives radio broadcasting, and nothing will be able to change that.