Why Radio's War Against AI May Be the Blueprint for Hollywood
As AI floods music and entertainment, one legacy medium draws a line in the sand.
As a child, it never occurred to me that being a journalist might be something I’d pursue, even though one of my fictional heroes, Carl Kolchak, The Night Stalker, made the reporter scutwork look fun. And despite my grandfather working as an engineer for IBM, frequently showing me weird and new technologies before they hit the mainstream, I didn’t grow up harboring dreams of following in his footsteps. The truth is, one of the things that most enthralled me as a child was the radio. Voices in the night telling stories framed by a variety of soundscapes that allowed me to imagine worlds beyond my bedroom.
Eventually, I got to live out that dream as a radio DJ and host, first at Long Island’s WBAI (where rap legends Public Enemy got their start), then at WQHT (aka NYC’s rap music staple Hot 97), and briefly at the AM talk radio station WLIB, headquartered in Manhattan. Despite the rise of Spotify and Apple Music, I still listen to live radio whenever and wherever I can get my audio fix.
All of this is why I was absolutely stunned by a recent turn of radio events. It turns out that the AI canary in the entertainment coal mine may be none other than iHeartRadio, the music and talk show audio network serving roughly 276 million listeners in the United States. But before I explain why, let’s quickly remember the company’s history with automation. In 2018, the network of stations pioneered AI integration in radio broadcasts by using the technology to automate music transitions during broadcasts for “real-time AI-processing to create the ideal transition every time a song plays.”
This wasn’t the first time iHeartRadio leveraged automation. For over 20 years, iHeartRadio (formerly Clear Channel) has used Radio Computing Services (RCS) systems to automate tasks including playing on-air advertisements, playing music, and inserting pre-recorded human DJ voice breaks into programming schedules. The trend for the radio behemoth seemed to be hurtling toward full automation of the entire experience.
That kind of automation-driven evolution seemed even more likely given the rise of generative AI. New AI tools have increasingly become adept at replicating not just the human voice, but even famous voices of actors, celebrities, and, yes, historic radio announcers. However, iHeartRadio just announced a completely unexpected new policy for its radio stations: Guaranteed Human.
