For months, a popular Australian radio station has used an AI-generated DJ to host one of its segments — and no one seemed to notice, as reported by the Australian Financial Review and The Sydney Morning Herald. The show, called Workdays with Thy, offers a four-hour mix of hip hop, R&B, and pop, with no indication that the voice of its host, Thy, is AI-generated.
An AI-generated radio host in Australia went unnoticed for months
The show, called Workdays with Thy, uses the AI-generated voice and likeness of a real person during a four-hour segment.
Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.
Workdays with Thy is broadcast on the Sydney radio station CADA. Its owner, ARN Media, confirmed to the Financial Review that while Thy is AI-generated, the host’s voice and likeness are modeled after an actual employee in the company’s financial department. Thy’s voice was created with the AI voice generator ElevenLabs, as first reported by the newsletter The Carpet.
Neither CADA’s website nor the show itself discloses that its host is AI-generated. “Curated by our music experts, these are the songs that are charting or on the cusp of blowing up — hear it first with Thy so you can boast to your friends and say you were all over it first,” the show’s description says.
This isn’t the only recent instance of AI-generated content seemingly going unnoticed. After debuting an AI-generated Microsoft Surface ad in January, the company only now revealed its use of AI.
As reported by the Financial Review, Workdays with Thy first appeared on CADA’s website in November 2024, and its ratings suggest it “reaches at least 72,000 people.” Teresa Lim, the vice president of the Australian Association of Voice Actors, slammed ARN Media’s failure to disclose the use of an AI host. “Australian listeners deserve honesty and upfront disclosure instead of a lack of transparency leading them to trust a fake person they think is a real on-air person,” Lim wrote on LinkedIn.
“We’re trying to understand what’s real and what’s not,” ARN CEO Ciaran Davis told the Financial Review. “What we’ve learned is the power of the announcers we have.”
Other radio stations have also experimented with using AI, including a Portland, Oregon radio station and Sirius XM. Last year, a Polish radio station laid off journalists only to replace them with AI hosts — an ”experiment” it later ended following backlash.
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