After writing this blog pretty much every day over the past 21+ years now, you begin to fall into familiar patterns—especially if you’re not careful. Like that weird déjà vu feeling that creeps up on you, there are times where I’m writing about a radio topic I’ve written about before. Maybe more than once.
That’s the case today. The concept of robot disc jockeys has been around for some time now, probably longer than you think. Perhaps the most famous of these DJ bots is Alpha Media’s AI Ashley who made her debut in Portland almost exactly two years ago right now. I’ll have an update on her from her creator later in this post.
But for context, let’s go back to what I believe is the first DJ robot, Denise. Her born on date is 2011, more than 14 years ago. Her inventor is a true visionary, Dominique Garcia. At the time, he got himself into a debate with Canadian musicologist, Alan Cross, over the efficacy and ethics of robot DJs. Back then, it was a fascinating look at a potential future for radio broadcasting and I covered it in JacoBLOG in a post called “Oh, Denise.”
Now that we’ve heard modern-day AI hosts, Denise sounds a bit dated—or perhaps Siri-like in her speech. But back then, her presence was every bit as controversial as the AI debate has been over the past couple of years. Here’s Denise’s aircheck from 13 years ago (reminiscent perhaps as us listening to ourselves at the very beginning of our on-air careers):
Obviously, Garcia was well ahead of his time, posing a topic worthy of discussion:
Can a robot DJ do a better job than the human version?
Fast-forward a dozen or so years and the ChatGPT era begins. And not long afterward comes the AI Ashley experiment by Phil Becker and his Alpha Portland team. I covered it here on JacoBLOG.
Nearly two years later and the AI Ashley experiment is over…at least for now. Alpha’s Live 95.5 in Portland recently announced AI Ashley’s midday replacement, the apparently human Tamara Dhia:
View this post on Instagram
Ashley Elzinga—the real talent behind the AI Ashley concept—will remain with the station on weekends, and as Live 95.5’s website explains, AI Ashley will still make the occasional appearance. I caught up with Phil Becker (pictured) earlier in the week to get the story behind this personnel/bot move:
“AI Ashley is part of our strategy — we’re just evaluating what her
next use case should be. From the beginning, we considered AI Ashley a viable and innovative tool, and that hasn’t changed. Rather than ending the experiment, we’re treating it like any other content: assess what we learned, refine the application, and evolve it. As for doing it again, absolutely. AI is not going away, and neither is our commitment to using it responsibly, creatively and transparently.”
Ironically, the AI Ashley news came at the same time a big radio story broke “down under” at Sydney’s CADA, part of Australian Radio Network.
In fact, I first saw it in Independent, written more as an exposé. It turned out the “Weekdays With Thy” show has been hosted for six months as a bot posing as a DJ developed by the AI voice firm ElevenLabs.
Investigative reporter Stephanie Coombe uncovered the story—or scandal—as it reads in Independent. Coombes broke the Thy controversy a couple weeks ago in her blog, “The Carpet.”
via The Carpet
After being tipped off, she asked the key questions that powered her investigation:
“What is Thy’s last name? Who is she? Where did she come from?”
Coombes discovered another talent at ARN had comprehensive bios on the station website. There was no such listing for Thy.
She went on to do a deep dive using mp3 files over multiple Thy shows. In the process, she discovered the DJ in question said the same phrases in the same way on different days. (Don’t we call these “crutch phrases?”)
via The Carpet
It also turned out Thy had no social media presence. And Coombes discovered ARN has a business agreement with ElevenLabs.
Hmm….
The upshot is that ARN executive Fayed Tohme eventually came clean, admitting using AI to create Thy. In a now-deleted LinkedIn post, Independent reports Tohme wrote, “No mic, no studio, just code and vibes” when explaining the Thy phenomenon. He explained the Thy project “pushes the boundary of what ‘live radio’ even means.”
All of this raises the question of disclosure. For whatever the reason, ARN took the approach of not revealing Thy’s cyber origins. Depending on how you look at this subsequent reveal of the real Thy, the lack of transparency is curious.
Notably, when Alpha and Becker launched AI Ashley, the reveal to the audience (and the media) was clear and frequent. Here’s how Becker framed it to me earlier this week:
“From day one, we were clear and upfront — with our audience, our internal teams, our clients, and the broader industry — that AI Ashley was artificial intelligence. Transparency wasn’t just a decision; it was a non-negotiable value for us.”
The research we’ve done to date indicates full disclosure is a must. Consider this data from last year’s Public Radio Techsurvey:
And that leads us to what exactly was behind ARN’s strategy. Why take the chance their DJ ruse might be eventually exposed? After all, how do you realistically keep something like Thy a secret inside a fully staffed radio station? And when there are thousands of listeners in the Sydney area and others tuning in on the iHeartRadio app, how long can the subterfuge last?
That was my first reaction to the Thy Affair. My second thought is whether this was all a stunt to begin with, designed to come out and make the big splash it has enjoyed.
Becker had the same thought:
“It does make you wonder whether the real play was marketing all along. They’re getting a ton of attention, and since we live in an attention economy it would make any marketer wonder if that was the intention from the onset.”
All of this raises a lot of questions. Here are three of mine.
- If this was designed to come out, it sure took a long time for someone to eventually figure it out. That might suggest the AI technology is damn good, ostensibly fooling thousands of Sydneysiders. Or it might mean not all that many people are listening to CAVA to notice. Or perhaps whether they realized it or not, listeners didn’t care because Thy sounded as good as the human beings on the station.
- Why does it always seem to be about female AI jocks. We know from six AQ surveys among commercial radio air personalities in the U.S. women are underrepresented on American radio. Is the plethora of female DJ bots just rubbing salt into old wounds?
- And to channel the author Philip K. Dick, “Do AI DJs have the ‘dead air dream?'”
Stay tuned. There will be more chapters to follow.
Originally published by Jacobs Media
