Content by Anthony Dockrill
I’ve already written about the biggest trend last year in audio, but 2025 also saw a new, disturbing trend that is going to help shape this year and beyond. Namely, the accelerating use of AI under the umbrella of ‘innovation’, but which is really here to save a few coins and put more humans onto the scrap heap.
Cory Doctorow, writing about tech in 2022, coined the term ‘enshittification’. In 2024, enshittification was the Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year.
The term refers to businesses setting up services and platforms that initially work for customers, but over time these services and platforms are degraded, or enshittified, to maximise short-term profits. The key part of enshittification is that these businesses know they have made their offerings worse, but they also know their customers will keep using the platform. Do a Google search and look at the first links offered. They used to be the best match for your search; now they are just companies that paid to be at the top of the list. Often these are the very companies you should not be clicking on. That’s enshittification.
2025 was the year we saw the first clear signs of enshittification coming to radio.
First, there was the news of an AI presenter on the Australian Radio Network (ARN). ARN, for six months, had on air a host named ‘Thy’, who was an AI-generated voice. This can of worms blew up after it was discovered Thy wasn’t actually an Asian female presenter but an artificial voice from a bunch of GPUs. If putting a fake human on your network isn’t enshittification, the word has no meaning.
It would be foolish to think this is the end of this kind of thing on our airwaves, but it should be. As I have written, radio only makes sense if it acknowledges and leans into the fact that it is the most human of the modern media platforms. If radio turns its back on conversations and real connections with its audience, it will be lost.
The other example we should talk about is Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) using AI to slim down its news offerings. The story was broken by the ABC’s Media Watch and shows how regional listeners are going to be the first to see wide-scale enshittification of their listening options.
If that wasn’t bad enough, SCA then had to explain how their news bulletin system wrongly identified Dylan Hogarth, who is a News Limited journalist, as the perpetrator of a serious crime. The incorrect news bulletins went out a number of times on Triple M 104.7 and SAFM.
A SCA spokesperson said in regards to the misidentification:
“SCA understands the importance of quality localised news coverage and is taking this matter very seriously. SCA is currently conducting an internal investigation into the error.”
It’s unclear from this statement if SCA really understands the importance of local news or just not getting caught putting AI hallucinations on air. If Dylan Hogarth sued for defamation, and he would have a very strong case, it might clarify their position on this matter.
Previous assurances that news generated by AI is fact-checked by humans are shown here to be empty. Also, I would have thought AI only makes sense if you get rid of your unwanted humans, because if they are still very much needed, where is the amazing productivity gain? Unless you work your remaining humans to the bone. Either way, this is a narrow and depressing vision of the future of radio at work here.
In short, who reading this would advise their kids to pursue a career in radio? It goes without saying it doesn’t have to be this way.
So, next year when newsrooms are streamlined or removed, journalists’ and producers’ workloads go up, and local presenters find they are surplus to requirement, resulting in listeners finding they have less local options, less news they can rely on, or news that is even relevant to their community. Look at the spin, and if you see words like “innovation”, “productivity gains”, “reform” or heaven forbid “a commitment to quality” being mentioned as the drivers that result in less humans being employed, just be sure what you are witnessing and listening to is enshittification. Pure and simple.
Anthony Dockrill is a Digital Producer at Pod Jam and the former Program Director of 2SER FM Sydney.
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