A Polish radio station announced Monday that it has ended an “experiment” involving the use of “presenters” generated by artificial intelligence instead of real journalists after the measure came under heavy criticism.
Several weeks after laying off its journalists, OFF Radio Krakow relaunched last week using AI-generated virtual characters as presenters.
People across the country expressed their annoyance and concern that humans will be replaced by AI.
The station director, Marcin Pulit, said in a statement Monday that The objective was to spark a debate about the use of artificial intelligence, and that mission had been successful. He added that the experiment should last three months, but saw no reason to continue.
“After a week, we have gathered too many observations, opinions and conclusions to the point that we have reached the decision that there was no point in continuing,” Pulit wrote.
He declared that the station was “surprised by the level of emotion generated by this experiment, attributing non-existent intentions and actions to us, crude judgments formulated under the premise of false information.”
The station in Krakow, a city in southern Poland, said that Their avatars were designed to appeal to a young audience by talking about cultural, artistic and social topics, including topics of interest to the LGBTQ+ community.
Last week’s change drew national attention after Mateusz Demski, a journalist and film critic who until recently hosted a show on the station, launched a petition demanding that the network end the experiment and published an open letter in which he denounced “the replacement of employees with artificial intelligence.”
“It is a dangerous precedent that affects us all,” wrote. He argued that this could open the door “to a world in which experienced employees involved in the media sector for years and workers in creative industries will be replaced by machines.”
More than 23,000 people signed the petition.
The station last week aired an “interview” conducted by an AI-generated presenter voiced by Wisława Szymborska, a Polish poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature who died in 2012.