CADA’s workday presenter is a real person. But she doesn’t present the afternoon shift live and is not employed as a radio presenter.

The host, known on air as Thy, works in ARN’s finance department and her voice clone presents the daily show.

The show is an ARN experiment with new technology and has been running for 6 months.

Thy is her real name, the voice on air is her real voice, cloned with Eleven Labs and the photo on the website is the real person.

The content and voice clone used in each voice break in the show are generated by AI.

A spokesperson for ARN has told radioinfo:

At ARN, we’re always exploring how new technology can support great content and enhance the listener experience. As part of this, we’ve been trialling AI audio tools on CADA using the voice of Thy — an ARN team member.  This is a space being explored by broadcasters globally, and while the trial has offered valuable insights, it’s also reinforced the unique value that personalities bring to creating truly compelling content.

With a number of recent redundancies and an unsettling fall in the company’s share price, employees are worried about whether the ‘experiment’ will be used more widely to reduce costs. The show has been the subject of internal whispers for a while, and broke publicly in the Australian Financial Review this week:

“Every weekday at 11am, a young woman comes on air at CADA, a radio station in Sydney’s west owned by one of the country’s biggest media companies. But Thy, as she is known, is not real. Workdays with Thy might look and sound much like any other radio program – but its host, who presents four hours of hip hop, is the work of artificial intelligence…”

The news has raised issues because the use of AI was not declared, and that it could be the thin end of the wedge for further cost cutting at the company.

ElevenLab’s usage policy includes the requirement to disclose the use of AI. It says: “Organizations using our Services, including without limitation Conversational AI, to power AI agents must clearly and prominently disclose to their users they are interacting with AI rather than a human.”

The AI usage is not declared on the CADA show page.

With dozens of people recently losing their jobs at ARN, staff are also nervous about whether they too could be replaced by cheaper alternatives such as voice clones. Recent job ads on various platforms such as Linkedin have reinforced this fear by seeking people to work as ‘AI Tutors’ to train AI for voice work.

Presenter and voice over artist Teresa Lim outlined a number of objections to the use of AI in a Linkedin Post, saying: “As an Asian-Australian female HUMAN voice actor and presenter in the radio and advertising industry, I find this industry-first move offensive on various levels.”