Hello, I'm James Cridland, the radio futurologist, and every week or so I write a newsletter all
about the future of radio and international radio trends and that sort of thing.
And this is the podcast version for people that can't be bothered to read.
And this is the version from February the 28th.
Robot Radio comes closer with Radio GPT, but is it any good?
Press release from Futury Media promised a thing called Radio GPT, and it reads like
the sort of thing that I should be implacably against.
The world's first AI driven localised radio content.
Radio GPT is a system that watches social media for trending topics in your local area,
writes a script apparently using GPT-3 technology, and then uses AI voices to make radio with
them.
And it has the horrible title of Live, Local and Powered by AI.
Well I shared the press release on social media and people responded with the usual
you know, complaints.
This sounds like an awful idea.
AI voices aren't there yet.
Nobody will use this.
This is the worst idea ever.
And I kind of hoped that that was true, but then I discovered that there was a live stream
demo of this dreadful service that anyone could listen to.
So I took a listen while on a train in Sydney, looking forward to being really rather rude
about this horrible idea.
And here's a little clip.
Every voice you hear on radio GPT is 100% AI.
Here's what's trending on social media in Springfield, discovered and delivered in real
time.
On radio GPT.
East Springfield, six year old, Mason Johnson ordered $1,000 worth of food from several area
restaurants with his dad's Grubbub account.
Ouch.
But Grubbub was nice enough to offer the family a $1,000 gift card to help out.
Not letting him get away with it.
Mason's dad took cash from his piggy bank to teach him a lesson.
Hey dad, here's an idea.
How about keeping an eye on your iPhone?
Live made locally in Springfield at 100% voiced and powered by AI.
This is radio GPT.
Irritatingly, it's rather good, isn't it?
Now there are some smoke and mirrors being deployed here by Futuri for the test stream.
It isn't live, it's a loop.
The voices may be AI, but either they're the best AI voices out there, or someone's tuned
their delivery rather suspiciously well for the promos.
I do know that Topic Pulse uses some human moderation as well.
The stream just says every voice is AI.
So this isn't 100% AI produced service after all, and actually the press release doesn't
say that either.
There are some clever tricks too.
The songs in the demo stream are all 90 second edits, which is very clever for a demo.
The local news is for Springfield, someone's clearly a fan of The Simpsons at Futuri Towers
in glittering Cleveland, Ohio.
The little bits of news, scripted to have a little joke at the end of them, work well.
The station sounds tight.
It's undoubtedly more live and local than 10 great songs in a row can be.
There are some little factoids about bands that play, which are interesting and quite
decent as well.
The only concern that I would have is that they needed to be rotated quite sparingly
to have the desired effect.
Now sure, some phrases don't sound quite right if you listen really carefully, but then some
phrases spoken by human beings don't sound quite right either.
If you've listened to a BBC podcast outside the UK, you'll have heard this podcast is
supported by Advertising Outside the UK, which I have to listen to all the time and has the
emphasis in the wrong place.
It skips past the word advertising and seemingly stresses the word side.
It's very annoying.
But for an overnight shift or for a weekend service or even to replace the non-stop music
sweeps during the day, Radio GPT is actually quite a passable listen, much of that pains
me to say so.
It's worth a listen for yourself if you can.
You'll find a link in our show notes and our newsletter at James.Crid.Landed.
I don't know why I said hour there.
I'm used to saying that for the other job.
If you like AI-powered radio DJs, then you're going to get quite a few of them in the next
six months, I suspect, because Spotify has also launched its own, which A, doesn't sound
like AI at all.
I suspect it's been entirely faked for the press releases video.
B, seems to contain nothing of any use, unlike Radio GPT.
It's a discombobulated voice calling itself X, and it tells you that you listened to quite
a lot of songs from the 1970s recently, so here's another one.
Or it'll say, here's a new release from a music type you love without actually telling
you what the new release is called.
Of all of the finesse of Radio GPT, this one comes very lacking.
In other news, Dan Taylor Watt has published an excellent animation of the top 20 radio
stations in the UK over the past decade, and it really highlights how static everything
is.
It's definitely worth a look.
You'll find that linked.
Global's Radio X launched its first brand extension in mid-February.
Nick Goodman has taken a look at how it works musically.
Ken Bruce, who was due to leave BBC Radio 2 at the end of April, has been quietly asked
to finish up this week, and he sounds a bit grumpy about it in his texts.
Dan Cocker is bored of reading the annoying social posts about how badly Ken Bruce
has been treated by Radio 2 and has posted a long thread, basically saying, Ken like
wanted to leave.
Meanwhile, Matt Deegan writes about why most DJs don't even get a last week on air, which
I think is understandable if rude to listeners and rude to the presenter themselves.
Actually, I was given a last week on air when I was a full-time radio presenter by the
excellent Steve Martin.
No, not that one.
It probably helps that I was going to move to a staff job in the same company at a different
radio station, though.
I didn't get the chance to say goodbye after five years of Halem FM shifts, though, to
my regrets, but my last words on the station were, I'll see you next week, hopefully.
Which I think shows that it probably didn't come as much of a surprise.
Everyone's favourite radio stunt inventor, Paige Nienaba, crazy name, crazy guy, has been
sharing some fun, hunt the balloon to get some concert tickets.
It's some quite nice work that he's been doing with radio stations in North America,
where, of course, they've had quite a lot of balloons that have been hunted recently.
I linked to some visual radio from the Good Folk at Global, LBC.
I'm fascinated at where Nick Ferrari's microphone is in the little clip.
You'll find that, again, linked from the show notes today.
I'm called a radio expert in a piece by The Telegraph as well, which is exciting.
I'll take that.
This is the not unexpected news that Talksport, the UK's remaining national commercial AM
broadcaster, is wanting to turn some of its AM transmitters off.
It was sharing infrastructure with Absolute Radio, who came off earlier this year.
Talksport is, of course, not a music station, and arguably stands to temporarily benefit
from Absolute's retreat.
So maybe they'll hold on to those AM transmitters for a little while longer.
They will be turning a few off.
My suspicion is that they're turning a few off, where it probably won't make much difference.
Thank you to Ross Winters for the five coffees.
That's kind of you.
I'm looking forward to seeing Ross in Toronto in June for Radio Days North America, which
should be good fun.
Thank you also to Dominic, who agreed wholeheartedly with my grumble about the BBC's bullying of
its listeners to download the BBC Sounds app if they wanted to keep listening.
He agreed so much.
Three more coffees are on the way, which is good of him.
I haven't given his surname just in case he works there.
And thank you to Lisa Kerr, who writes, I love that you keep me in touch with my old
world.
She came to Australia recently.
Facebook tells me, but didn't pop in for a coffee, which is a good job because my drip
filter only makes one cup at a time.
It's very tedious if other people come.
Anyway, thank you to Richard Hilton, to James Masterson, and to Brun Audio Consulting for
your ongoing support of my newsletter and of this podcast.
I'm very grateful to you.
If you'd like to support my work in any way, you can buy me a coffee.
You can become a member to give regularly if you like, or just give a one-off coffee
or five.
You do that by me a coffee.com slash James Cridland.
That's by me a coffee.com slash James Cridland.
Now I'm at the IAB Audio Summit in Sydney tomorrow, tomorrow being the 1st of March.
And it really is kind of tomorrow.
It's going to be tomorrow in about an hour.
I'll also be at Podcast Movement Evolutions in Las Vegas, March the 6th to the 11th.
Looking forward to that.
Radio Days Europe in Prague, March the 25th to the 30th.
The 25th to the 30th.
Is that right?
Have I got that correct?
Yes, maybe I have.
I've just sent somebody an email saying that I'm absolutely free, but I'm clearly not.
Anyway, the NAB show in mid-April, the New Zealand Podcast Summit in mid-May, the podcast
show 2023 in London at the end of May.
Oh, I'm also, by the way, in Berlin in mid-April as well, which is a thing.
I'm looking forward to that too.
And I'm in Radio Days North America in early June.
Contact details are at james.cridland.net, which is my professional website.
I use the word professional likely.
And that gives you more information about who I am and what I do and whether I can help
you further.
And if you're a master dom, then I am there too.
James at bne.social is where you'll find me, bne, of course, being the airport code for
Brisbane.
Or you can just search for James at crid.land and you'll find me there as well.
And it would be lovely if you would join me there instead of the bird site, which is
a dreadful thing.
Anyway, that's it for this time.
So thank you for listening and keep listening.