“Ashley Z” Elzinga is the first public test case of Futuri Media’s RadioGPT as a way of delivering AI radio personality content. She’s definitely not the first AI personality I’ve come across. That had already happened by the time of the Futuri announcement, and I’m confident I’ve heard others, including at least one friend of this column. But as I’ve already learned, you can’t ask somebody if they were live or AI, because what if the answer is, “No, I just typically sound wooden”?
The debut of “AI Ashley” in middays on KBFF (Live 95.5) Portland, Ore., won’t be the real test case of AI radio personalties. Elzinga, the morning host at Top 40 WKHQ Traverse City, Mich., was already voice-tracking that shift. She’s replacing herself, not a salaried employee, and the station is being transparent. That’s not the scenario that broadcasters are concerned about, although I’ve seen some react negatively anyway on principle.
On the day that the Live 95.5 story broke, the first thing somebody said to me about Elzinga was “she’s great.” While all ears were on Live 95.5 this week, I was also able to take a First Listen to tape of Elzinga on the station on June 2 — presumably a regular voice-tracked shift — as well as on WKHQ on the morning of June 14 between 7:30-8:30 a.m.
Elzinga is new in mornings on WKHQ; the station unveiled a new lineup on March 6. As heard on Wednesday, she definitely had content, as well as the candor and willingness to share her real-life self with listeners that have become the hallmarks of a good morning host:
- Elzinga and “Intern Vinny’s” 7:40 bit was “spot the false news story.” One of the three was Johnny Depp’s (real) new fragrance deal. “I hate Johnny Depp,” she said.
- There was a news item about a survey on overused workplace jargon, particularly “boiling the ocean” and “circle back.” (“I feel like such a little jerk when I say that at home.”)
- It was the last day of school in the market, and Elzinga talked about the sadness of knowing that some friendships won’t last when the convenience of being in the same place every day goes away.
- She frontsold 50/50’s “Cupid” by actually telling listeners “You may know this song already, but it’s new to KHQ,” addressing a problem that stations have had with “new music” in the streaming music age.
- When she came out of the song, she allowed that “Cupid has no place in my life right now.” Then she began riffing on Cupid.com, which was the perfect place to find a partner “if you want to guarantee that your love story is going to have a twist you don’t want.”
I laughed. I learned something about the market. The show certainly sounded like it was in real time and not the random-content-from-nowhere that some syndicated shows have become. The topical and celebrity items might not be new to you, but they were ones I hadn’t heard anywhere else yet. If I had stumbled across KHQ mornings unaided, it would have passed my real radio test.
On Live 95.5 in early June, the jock breaks were mostly being used to tease/activate contesting, sometimes in conjunction with a stager. Listening between 10:55 and noon, I heard four breaks, three of them actually in the 11 a.m. hour.
- A tease for the next two contests, as well as a frontsell;
- A call-to-text for a Disneyland getaway contest with some good extra salesmanship about being able to skip the long lines;
- A call-to-text for a Taylor Swift-in-Seattle contest;
- Another Disneyland teaser.
In those tracks, it was possible to hear the same vocal spontaneity I’d encountered that morning on WKHQ. Because the tracks had a specific intent, they also managed not to sound like the generic throwaway breaks that characterize a lot of the voice-tracking I heard.
On Tuesday, “AI Ashley’ was doing a mix of contesting and frontsells as well.
- The Morgan Wallen tour coming to Tacoma, in conjunction with a frontsell for his new song with Lil Durk;
- Teasing an upcoming two commercial-free hours, as well as frontselling Taylor Swift’s “Karma” remix;
- Talking about an upcoming Benson Boone listener event, as well as a frontsell for Toosii;
- A bit about Ava Max tickets in combo with a frontsell for Luke Combs’s version of “Fast Car.”
There were certainly places here where you could tell from the cadence that there might have been AI involved. “AI Ashley” gave the station phone number, and there was a break and an odd modulation in the middle. In fact, the stilted-sounding moment often came in the second part of a break, as if a live speaker had failed to take a breath between sentences, then not made it through the next one. It did not sound as spontaneous as the before-AI set of breaks, although I was certainly listening through a different filter.
The sales pitch for AI at radio has been that it isn’t intended to replace good local talent but bad voice-tracking. This isn’t that, if only because Elzinga’s early June tracks were good. My concerns about AI from the beginning have been that we need a code of ethics immediately, and that it will be used to institutionalize the mediocre, low-ambition hosting that voice-tracking gives us now. If anything has happened on the first front, I’m not aware of it. If the latter happens, we won’t know either beyond not having heard an improvement.
I haven’t written about KBFF in a long time. Making positive use of AI is certainly in character with the station’s positioning as cutting-edge. Some of what I heard outside the breaks is also worth a mention:
- There was a high percentage of music-from-the-streaming-world. Most of it was hits heard on most CHRs now, but there were also two different Lil Durk songs in middays;
- There were a lot of customized promos from morning hosts Brooke & Jeffrey;
- There was a clear attempt to be all over the Taylor Swift Eras tour, including the upcoming Seattle show, including devoting Free Ticket Friday to a different Swift era each week.
(UPDATE: Over the last week, AI Ashley has become a national news story. On June 21, I took another listen and what I heard between 10:50 a.m. and Noon appeared to be two AI breaks [identified as such] and two regular breaks [in which she was just ID’ed as Ashley]. The AI breaks were a fronstell of the new Dua Lipa song and about enjoying the day’s warm weather. The other breaks were about the missing submarine and promoting an upcoming Harry Styles flyaway. Again, those two breaks were more naturally cadenced; again, I’d allow that it might have just been the power of expectation.)
At Radiodays North America in early June, keynoted by Futuri’s Daniel Anstandig, AI was a topic in most of the panels I attended, even when it wasn’t the panel topic. Broadcasters came to a conclusion about AI almost immediately, and that was what you heard last week at the conference in Toronto, almost to a person — “I am concerned about AI’s potential abuses, but I want to embrace the future and not be left behind.” Like “circle back” (or, Elzinga noted, “drinking the Kool-Aid”), embracing AI has become corporate-speak as well.
So how would you use AI to “move the needle” (also on the list of jargon), knowing that addressing any of radio’s numerous challenges is sometimes like “boiling the ocean”? Since we had four perfectly good breaks from Elzinga via “live” V/T, I’d want more of “AI Ashley” than four brief breaks. I’m always happy to hear music frontsold — it’s something we took for granted that doesn’t happen enough now — but best practice AI will allow for more personality than that alone.
The thing that we’re most scared of with “AI” — a computer with an id — is also its source of greatest comic potential. The best radio smart-speaker promos are the ones where Siri or Alexa responds in a particularly human/out-of-character way. If AI were going to be a character on my radio station, it probably wouldn’t supplant an existing one, but embody my stationality taken to a comic extreme. For college radio, for instance, it’s easy to imagine an AI Wolverine or Bulldog that takes on a life of its own. (The trick is to avoid trojans.) And if you’re worried about an AI voice becoming the spirit of your radio station, then the task is not to allow that to take root with every weather forecast, spec spot, and virtual airshift where you are going to use AI anyway.
(UPDATE: In an interview with Fred Jacobs that appeared after this column, Alpha’s Phil Becker acknowledged this possibility, saying that AI Ashley could become a “Slim Shady”-like alter-ego to her regular persona. Also, on the day this story ran, WWZY Monmouth/Ocean, NJ PD Robby Bridges put out a call on Facebooks for the industry to define best practices–the first other call for a code of ethics that I’ve seen thus far.)
