Contribution from Dave Charles, CEO of Media RESULTS Inc.
John Parikhal (pictured) worked with me as media partners for Joint Communications Corp for 17 years, with us both having consulted in Australia and South East Asia. John calls himself a “Practical Futurist’ which means that he explains and unravels the very complex issues around AI. I sat John down for a Q&A to get an update on the latest AI audio trends and sort out the truth from fiction to help organisations turn his insights and predictions into growth and revenue.
Dave Charles: AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. Do we really want ‘artificial’ anything in our lives void of human feeling, failings and emotions? Your thought on that aspect of AI.
John Parikhal: There are different kinds of AI. Most are helpful and save you time and effort. We’ve seen it for years in everything from Spotify “recommendations” to autocorrect on your phone. The most recent AI systems can “learn” faster, increasingly without input from humans. That’s where people get scared. And it’s the great unknown. One person who tackles this head on is Juliette Powell in her book “The AI dilemma”.
DC: AI has impacted many businesses over the last decade, now all forms of audio content including radio are going through the AI changes. Can you bring our readers up to date on the emergence of AI in all forms of popular audio currently being used?
JP: AI is being used everywhere. It’s used to edit podcasts, as a voice clone on radio broadcasts, as a commercial reader in ads, and even to take your order at McDonald’s. It’s writing subtitles for TV shows and movies. It’s even narrating audio books. All of those have been going on for quite a while. What’s new are the LLMs such as ChatGPT and Claude, which can create scripts and turn them into audio with little to no human intervention. We’re just beginning the LLM journey. The analogy would be that we are at the stage where one-tube radio receivers were when radio started.
DC: Who are some of the leading companies working on new AI tools to enhance the audio experience? What particular AI tools do you think will really benefit users now?
JP: One of the leading companies for AI audio is Futuri, Daniel Anstandig’s pioneering effort in using AI for radio. They are already expanding into other fields. There are companies that use AI to improve sound quality – such as Adobe Audition and LALAL.AI. There is LANDR that does AI-powered mastering for producers and musicians. There is Descript, that cleans up audio on podcasts. It’s a long list.
DC: Can you name a few AI experts that are worth following as AI emerges into the audio and radio mainstream? You mentioned Juliett Powell. Tell our readers more please about her findings from her latest book ‘The AI Dilemma’.
JP: Juliette focuses on the practical and ethical impact of AI everywhere. Most companies don’t even know what AI their employees are using or how they are using it. Most don’t have an AI strategy but they are still in the market for anything with AI in the name as long as they think they’ll make short term financial games. Others worth following are Shelly Palmer for top line news and Kate Crawford for social impact of AI. If you really want to go deep, IBM offers a FREE 10 hour online certification course, that will give you a rich understanding of AI. And you’ll even have a certificate to hang on your wall. But it’s not a walk in the park. There’s lots to learn even at the beginner level.
DC: Radio is still ‘mass media’ for many. What should broadcasters be excited about the prospects of AI?
JP: Well, at one level, AI is accelerating the de-massification of media as predicted by Alvin Toffler almost 40 years ago. Which means lots of change. However, AI can help radio with routine tasks such a logs, rotations, etc. It can be used for bots on a station’s website. Futuri even offers a service that uses AI to create spec spots from scratch in about 3 minutes, right in front of a potential advertiser. AI helps with show prep. It can even suggest the type of promotions your listeners might like. And, another exciting aspect is text-to-video content creation which is done by systems such as Microsoft’s CoPilot and Midjourney. Great for station websites.
DC: What is scaring audio content creators about AI? Fear or ignorance? Is the AI genie truly out of the bottle and can never be put back in?
JP: The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. It’s both positive and negative. Audio content creators are scared that they might lose their jobs if AI can do it better. There’s some reality in that but there is also fear based on ignorance. AI can streamline creation and production, allowing for a richer product in less time and at lower cost for the creator. The overarching issue is that AI will result in a written, audio, and visual tsunami of content. It will be harder than ever to get noticed. In an environment like that, radio has an advantage because it’s already on the radar of many people, especially those over 35.
DC: You are a practical futurist. What does that mean and how does it help your clients?
JP: What I do is simple and hard. The futurist part is that I analyse data and trends to see what’s coming in the near future, which is 3 to 5 years. From this, I look for patterns and probabilities that might affect categories such as media, health care, finance, and even marketing. Then I handicap my predictions and look for the impact they might have on something like radio or the ad business. The practical part of futurism is figuring out ways for clients to protect themselves from the negatives that are emerging while taking advantage of the positive opportunities. AI is a great example of this.
DC: AI can be pricey. What is the best advice on investing in AI for your various audio products? Is there an entry point with AI products or a whole suite of things to improve content gathering and useful info for today’s consumers?
JP: Start with an AI strategy. And get professional help to work with you on it. We’ve advised a lot of companies on strategy and it has saved them money and sped up the impact of the AI they used. Over 60% of businesses start using AI with no strategy, which means inflated costs and suboptimal impact.
DC: In your view, will AI create more positives or negatives for audio in the short term. For example, if you use an AI generated voice you should identify it as AI generated. Is this a correct assumption or not?
JP: That’s a gray area. In some cases, you must identify AI generated product. In others you don’t. In the short term, I think AI is more positive than negative for audio. Better sound. Lower barriers for creative individuals to join the fray. The negative is that it increases content clutter so the bar goes up on what cuts through.
DC: How intuitive is AI for audio creators at the moment? For example, the ability to have two way conversations in a talk show setting as an example. This is a much different algorithm that is way more expensive correct? What’s a good starting point?
JP: Some AI is very intuitive. And, if the tech is not intuitive, someone somewhere is making the interface intuitive. Prices are going down EXCEPT for the “smart” AI which solves math problems and does serious computing. That’s no longer free. If I were just starting with AI, I’d play with ChatGPT, I might replace Google with Perplexity, I’d take the free IBM course, and I’d even fiddle with the image generators such as Midjourney or Loom. Play with it like a child. Discover what it can do. Always start there.
DC: What guardrails should audio creators use to make sure that AI can be controlled?
JP: I’m not sure that control is the issue. I think that ownership and authorship are the biggies. In both audio and visuals. There are watermarking programs coming online to make sure no one can “steal” your work.
DC: As we know now, AI can scrape all social and local media sources to make sure that your station is in tune with the most relevant daily local news and information. AI algorithms can be tuned for specific information gathering right? As a consumer, isn’t this an improvement over the abundance of voice tracked shows (late night, over nights and weekends) light on local content?
JP: The jury is out on whether voice tracking or AI voices are better. As for being “up to date”, it’s true AI can be current where voice tracks aren’t. At the same time, LLM type scraping AI can be WRONG either from hallucinations or incorrect source information, including local. Again it goes to strategy. What do you want to do? Where will AI reliably help you? Where is the risk bigger than the benefit?
DC: On the radio side of the street for a moment, many broadcasters are fearing that radio as we knew it is on the decline. In what ways can radio turn this reality around and make this mainstream medium more relevant and attractive for today’s savvy media consumers?
JP: I think broadcasters can already see that radio is getting hit – all they have to do it look at ratings and the shifting ad landscape as dollars chase digital. To be more engaging and relevant, radio has to do some things it seems to have had a problem with for at least 30 years – which is to create programming for today’s listener. That means much better entertaining commercials, less spot clustering, much better imaging and promos (more creative and more updated), fewer clichéd station IDs, DJs who can entertain every time they open the mic, song surprises that listeners love (play the Spotify #1 that fits your format, etc.), and lots of local references including their history, humor, shock, and awe. Just for starters.
Dave Charles, President Media RESULTS Inc. 
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