Warsaw, Poland — A Polish radio station sparked controversy this week after it fired journalists and restarted with AI-generated “presenters.”
Weeks after freeing the journalist, OFF Radio Krakow reopened this week, saying it was “Poland’s first experiment in which the journalist…is a virtual character created by AI.”
The station in the southern city of Krakow said the three avatars were designed to reach young listeners by talking about culture, art and social issues, including the concerns of LGBTQ+ people.
“Is artificial intelligence an opportunity or a threat for media, radio and journalism? We seek answers to this question,” station director Marcin Puritt said in a statement. Ta.
The change comes after journalist and film critic Mateusz Demski, who until recently hosted the show, published an open letter on Tuesday protesting the “replacement of workers with artificial intelligence.” It attracted attention.
“This is a dangerous precedent for all of us,” he wrote, leading to “a world in which experienced workers who have worked in the media sector for many years and those employed in the creative industries are replaced by machines.” He argued that it could pave the way for
Demsky told The Associated Press that more than 15,000 people had signed the petition by Wednesday morning. He said he has also received calls from hundreds of people, many of them young people who do not want to be subjects in such experiments.
Mr. Demski worked at OFF Radio Krakow from February 2022 until August, when he was one of about a dozen journalists who were fired, interviewing Ukrainians fleeing the war. He said the move was particularly shocking because the station is a taxpayer-supported public broadcaster.
Puritt claimed that no journalists were fired because of AI, and that it was because its audience ratings were “close to zero.”
Digital Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gaukowski also spoke out on Tuesday, saying he had read Demski’s complaint and that laws were needed to regulate AI.
“I’m a fan of AI development, but I think certain boundaries are being crossed more and more. The proliferation of AI should be for the people, not against them!” he said. wrote to X.
On Tuesday, the network aired an “interview” conducted by an AI-generated host with a voice impersonating Wisława Szymborska, a Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner in literature who died in 2012.
Michał Rusinek, president of the Wisła Szymborska Foundation, which manages the poet’s estate, told broadcaster TVN that the television station had agreed to use Szymborska’s name in its broadcasts. The poet had a sense of humor and would have liked it, he said.
