Edmonton music station's AI host part of growing trend

A disc jockey playing alt-rock tunes on Edmonton's airwaves on a belatedly dominicus dark introduces herself and jokes well-nigh face of the earth regularly asked about firmware updates.

Her sarcasm, she says, also gets auto-corrected.

When she first began hosting, she says songs on her show would buffer during transitions.

"Now, it remixes traffic reports," says Sarah, an AI DJ during a two-hour weekly radio show before introducing Welcome to the Black Parade by American rock band My Chemical Romance.

Rogers Sports & Media says Sarah began hosting on Sundays from 10 p.m. To midnight on SONiC 102.9 a few years ago.

Lori Beckstead, a radio and sound studies professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, says the computerized DJ is one of a few that have popped up at radio stations across Canada and the world in recent years.

"We are in this stage in the world of technology that we can create voices out of thin air, basically using AI that seem to have personality and sound human," Beckstead said.

Rogers Sports & Media, in a statement, says the use of the technology is purely additive to the station.

"It's in a time slot that previously didn't have a DJ, so no staffing impacts," a spokesperson said in an email.

"We're using the technology to explore opportunities to improve the listener experience on radio during music-only programming."

Rogers says a human producer oversees Sarah's scripts and guides the content throughout the broadcast.

Rogers did not respond to questions about hiring a human to host the Sunday time slot or whether Sarah would be a permanent feature of the radio station.

Beckstead said Sarah's presence during a not-so-late weekend broadcast in Edmonton is disheartening.

"In a commercial enterprise, the goal is to make as much money as possible," she said.

"I would welcome AI to do the jobs that it can do — if we lived in a society where the humans who are being displaced could have a basic level of income."

Chris Byrnes, the owner of Byrnes Communications Inc., said his AI radio hosts, Cleo and Layla, were one of the first to hit Canadian airwaves when they launched on a pair of his Ontario stations two years ago.

"We can't find anybody to work overnights ... So we decided putting an AI voice on the overnight was better than nothing," he said in a phone interview.

"It's not taking any jobs."

Cleo and Layla host from midnight until 5:30 a.m., he said, until a human takes over to inform thousands of local news, traffic and weather during the morning commute.

They initially only played music and talked about the weather, Byrnes said, but now the station is advertising other shows in their scripts.

Once every hour, they pick a topic from a platform that scans social media to see what people are talking about within the station's geographic boundary, he said.

Then, they run it through their own computerized filtration system, removing disinformation or offensive information, before discussing the topic on air.

They also look at the music log and search for information about the artists before playing their music. Before introducing a song by pop star Sabrina Carpenter, Cleo describes the artist as a former Disney Channel actress.

Station workers will listen back to the shows to catch errors, including the time one of the jockeys mispronounced Regina, the city in Saskatchewan, Byrnes said.

Over time, Byrnes said, the station has played with how the jockeys sound, such as the pace of their voices and their personalities.

"We're able to pick the voice we want," he said. "Do we want it to be cheeky? Do we want it to be sarcastic? Do we want it to be bright?

"We've played around with that to get a voice that we think works."

After two years of work, he described the jockeys as "basic" sounding.

Bynres said between 10,000 to 15,000 people listen to Cleo and Layla overnight.

Still, he said AI won't fully replace on-air talent.

"But I do think that those who don't embrace AI will end up getting replaced," he said. "The reality is we're all interacting with AI multiple times a day. Most of us don't even realize it."

Fakiha Baig is a journalist with the Canadian Press.

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