Three AI-generated avatars began delivering the news on a Polish radio station this week, sparking a backlash by journalists who say they were laid off to accommodate the move. Photo by Maylin Sojo/Pixabay
Oct. 25, 2024
Oct. 25 (UPI) -- A Polish radio station that replaced its human journalists with a trio of artificial intelligence-generated avatars to compile the news has sparked a backlash from reporters and skepticism from the government.
Calling it an "experiment" on "the opportunities and threats that the development of artificial intelligence bring," the online station OFF Radio Krakow on Monday rolled out a new format in which three virtual hosts, created using AI technology, deliver news content prepared by "real journalists who use artificial intelligence tools" to generate the text.
The AI avatars each host a two-hour show on weekdays, according to Marcin Pulit, the station's editor-in-chief.
"The project is time-limited," he said. "We assume that it will last no longer than 3 months and will be evaluated."
Despite assurances the use of AI-generated journalists is merely a temporary experiment, alarms were set off across the country.
Mateusz Demski, a former live host at OFF Radio Krakow who insists real journalists were laid off by the station in order to automate the news, led an effort to bring the incident to the attention of the public and the government.
Demski said Thursday a petition he composed, addressed to fellow journalists and Polish government officials demanding an explanation of the move, had been delivered to the Ministry of Culture with 19,000 signatures.
Nowhere in Pulit's announcement does he mention "that several people had lost their jobs shortly before," the petition states.
A letter similarly demanding information on the AI hosts signed by former journalists at OFF Radio Krakow was sent to Polish Culture Minister Hanna Wróblewska, Demski said in a Facebook post.
The controversy was also joined by Deputy Polish Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, who serves as the country's minister of digital affairs. He voiced skepticism about the station's move in a social media post on Wednesday.
"I read Mateusz Demski's story about the replacement of journalists by artificial intelligence at OFF Radio Krakow and although I am a fan of AI development, I believe that certain boundaries are being crossed more and more," he wrote, adding, "The widespread use of AI must be done for people, not against them!"
Pulit denied that live journalists were laid off to make way for the AI bots.
He told the Polish business news website Money.pl that "no OFF Radio Krakow employee was dismissed" -- rather, freelancers who were supplying a limited amount of original content to a station that mainly played automated music had contracts that were allowed to lapse.
"The listenership range of OFF Radio Krakow was close to zero," Pulit said, adding that its programming overlapped with its parent station, Radio Krakow, and another digital channel.
"This was the basis for the decision to make the change," he said.
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