October 25, 2024 – According to the Associated Press, a Polish radio station named “OFF” has made a controversial decision to fire all its journalists and relaunch this week with AI-generated “hosts.”
The station described this reboot as “an experiment conducted for the first time in Poland,” featuring virtual hosts created by AI.
Located in the southern Polish city of Krakow, the radio station stated that its three new virtual hosts will discuss culture, art, and social topics to attract a younger audience. In a statement, the head of the radio station, Marcin Prite, wrote, “Is AI an opportunity or a threat to media, radio, and journalism? We will strive to find the answer.”
However, this decision has sparked protests from local media figures. Former radio host and film critic Mateusz Demski released an open letter opposing “the replacement of employees with artificial intelligence.” “This is a dangerous precedent that concerns us all,” he warned, adding that it might lead to the replacement of veteran media professionals and creative industry workers by machines in the future workplace.
Demski informed the Associated Press that more than 15,000 people had signed a petition against this decision by Wednesday morning. He also mentioned receiving numerous complaint calls from young people who expressed their displeasure at being subjected to such experiments.
Demski had been working at OFF radio since February 2022 but was laid off in August along with about a dozen other journalists. Nevertheless, station head Prite insisted that the layoffs were not due to AI but because the station’s listenership was “almost zero.”
Meanwhile, Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Digital Affairs Minister, Krzysztof Goclowski, stated on Tuesday that he had seen Demski’s appeal and urged for the rapid development of regulations to control the use of AI. “While I support the advancement of AI technology, I believe we are increasingly crossing some boundaries. The widespread use of AI should serve humans, not pose a threat to them,” he said.
