First Listen: The AI Morning (And Overnight) Show

A year after the first AI-related product offerings ignited controversy at radio, it’s clear that AI has made its most real inroads at places other than behind the microphone, such as writing or voicing spec spots. The usages I’m most excited about are those that potentially free up PDs to deal more with on-air creativity. I’m also excited to hear Audacy’s recently announced AI-augmented custom stations as they roll out over the next few months.

At Country Radio Seminar’s AI Interactive Town Hall in late February, the session’s panelists took to the audience to solicit positive examples of AI usage. Those included AI to create custom artwork, safe for use on station websites with no clearance issues, including the station that had created a “Toby Keith ascending to Heaven” visual. A label person suggested that AI would make it easier for artists to contribute station promo and sweeper copy. One had used AI as the voice of a “bad Santa” for holiday promos.

The most prominent mention of AI for on-air personality came from Lakes Media’s Tom Birch, now a small-market station owner, but also an industry veteran known for his ratings service in the ‘80s. Lakes’ Soft AC WHLF South Boston, Va., did follow a live morning show with an AI-driven one last year. After six months of fine tuning, Birch said, there had been no loss of audience (based on streaming activity) or complaints. 

Like KBFF (Live 95) Portland, Ore.’s AI companion to middayer Ashley Elzinga a year ago, Birch said that WHLF is making use of Futuri’s Audio AI (now rebranded from RadioGPT). So is NRG’s Active Rock KFMW (Rock 108) Waterloo, Iowa, which is currently moving its AI DJ Tori from overnights to weekend mornings. I took a First Listen to both.

AC has always been at the center of the voice-tracking question. In its early days, one of the most heard arguments was “do you really need to pay somebody to stand in a room for four hours and say ‘more music, less talk”? Now, if an AC show is mostly service features, aren’t listeners already asking Siri and Alexa for those? Yet, AC has been one of the formats that has held up best against unhosted streaming choices, perhaps because breaks are a little less restrictive now. Even with liners, AC personality has always been said to hinge on vocal nuance, something harder to replicate with AI.

I listened to WHLF’s “Nicole” last week and again this morning, March 21 in the 7 a.m. hour. Not counting song tags, the voice was used for about six breaks an hour, mostly just to say hi and promote the “most music in the morning with Nicole,” but sometimes to crossplug all-’80s weekends or the Sunday “Yacht Rock” show, to give weather, or to tease that the news was next. There were also legal IDs and a “listen on your devices” promo that seemed to use an AI voice as well.

The hour of WHLF I heard reminded me of Classic Hits WVEK Johnson City, Tenn. When I heard that station nearly two years ago, before Futuri’s RadioGPT announcement, that station’s morning show was using song-tags/backsells that had a definite Siri/Alexa feel. There were also a few similarly cadenced topical bits, something that Nicole wasn’t doing. WVEK now has PD Steve Mann doing mornings.

KFMW’s “Tori” was more ambitious—closer to the attention-getting RadioGPT demo of a year ago than any of the other on-air efforts that I’m aware of. Tori did backsells, crossplugs, and station promos for half-price gift cards. But she also gave factoids and back story about songs. Tori intro’ed the Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)” with “What’s up kids? I’m AI Tory. It’s time to party!” The latter was probably her most natural-sounding line in case you’re wondering what a sentient AI would actually want. 

In general, Rock 108’s attitude toward its AI show was winking–very much in the spirit of “bad Santa.” At various points, the character identifies herself as “your favorite fake DJ” who is “making Saturday mornings weird.” A jock sweeper goes as far as having the imaging voice say “we’re not worried about AI taking our jobs anytime soon.”

Now that Tori is doing weekend mornings, it’s likely that direction will continue, confirming my initial sense that one of the best on-air AI uses was to create something deliberately funny and outrageous. In the spirit of Siri and Alexa, I also like it better as a co-host or team member than anchor. Rather than actors in phony prank calls, would it be funnier and more challenging for the morning show to react to a ChatGPT character? (It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that AI is being used to write those bits already.) AC CHQM (Move 103.5) producer Joey Arsenault praised ChatGPT’s value for writing morning trivia questions; for those stations without the ability to do “Thousand Dollar Minute” features, why not “host vs. AI”?

Here’s what I wrote about the first publicized use of AI hosting last summer.