Content by Anthony Dockrill

The news about the Thy AI-generated radio host has been making waves around the world. Many people have already expressed concerns about the lack of disclosure and the ethics of creating an Asian woman like Thy as a fake radio host. But I want to concentrate on a key part that cuts to the heart of the local radio industry and what we do when we make radio.

If you are working in radio and you are helping develop AI tools to replace the people you employ, then you have missed the entire point of radio.

Radio is people.

Radio is a conversation and a connection with a listener.

If you condition people to listen to AI, you may in the short term help your company’s bottom line, but you are also destroying the future of radio in this country. If you remove the connection people have with on-air talent and our listeners get used to AI or even start connecting to AI, then let me be blunt: No one needs you. You are suddenly delivering a product that could easily come from Spotify, YouTube or Meta. Or anyone frankly with access to a room full of servers. If you remove the heart of what you do and the way you operate, then you can be replaced by anyone with a bucket of cash anywhere in the world—and you probably will be.

Jobs can disappear quickly without a trace. We all now scan and pack our own groceries. The humans who used to do that are now largely gone. An industry made strategic decisions and we, the punters, changed our behaviour and our expectations. So it’s foolish to think that we can’t prime our listeners to get their news, information and even entertainment from an AI voice and that this won’t blow back on the local industry. Behaviour and expectations can easily change when given a nudge.

I’m a firm believer in AI and AI tools to enhance and make us all more productive (I’ve written about some of these tools recently), but these are tools and not ends. AI has the potential to save money and make us all more productive, but if the radio industry loses sight of its essential qualities, it will find the tech companies are ready to drink their milkshake—ask newspapers and magazines what happened to their business models when they faced off against tech companies that were smaller then and did not have AI in their corner.

Investing in people is the way to stop large tech companies from killing radio.

To buttress and defend its turf, radio needs to not just invest in people—it needs to double down and go all in. That means developing talent and building deeper and richer relationships with its listeners. It needs to develop a product that simply cannot be replaced by AI, not make them indistinguishable. An AI voice on air does none of that.

I recently wrote about how one of the key qualities of radio is trust. Removing people and replacing them with AI, even if well-intentioned, is also a sure way to erode one of radio’s greatest assets.

Real human connection and conversation is not just the heart of what radio does but also the bridge to securing its future. As an industry, radio has treated people it employs at times as expendable, and often that has reached on air where hosts can be axed in less than graceful or respectful ways. It’s also fair to say the industry does not develop and nurture talent like it used to. If as an industry you fail to maintain relations with your staff and, in turn, your listeners, you may find you are part of a future where listeners don’t think twice about loading a new app on their phones and in their cars and hitting the delete button on yours.

Time will tell if Thy was a simple misstep and soon forgotten or the first draft of an industry-wide suicide note.

Anthony Dockrill is a Digital Producer at Pod Jam and the former Program Director of 2SER FM Sydney.