Host Tamara Orban-Mikus, Programme and Music Director, Slager FM began the session by getting a temperature check, asking who in the room uses AI and can AI be used to make radio better and most of the room put up their hands to say yes. She then asked the panel how they thought Ai could or should be used in radio.
Philippe Generali CEO of RCS said that we are already seeing AI being used a lot with music scheduling and it means that it streamlines workloads so that one programme controller is able to oversee more stations, including brand extensions. He added that another way it can be used is by predicting if tracks will be a success by analysing data such as station data or outside data like fan base or how well a previous song performed.
Nick Dunkerley, Founder of Hindenburg said when it comes to creativity we are all told that AI will make our lives easier, but is that what we really want? He said, “We need to remove obstacles for journalists to focus on what’s important, not be more productive and create more programming, but focus on raising the quality of what we already have.” He added that we shouldn’t just lean in to AI as we will become irrelevant and there might be more content, but it is any good?
Philippe Generali played a video about the connection a radio station has with its audience during a natural disaster, how radio was the lifeline many people needed and he emphasised how important connection is for radio stations and listeners. He said that he hasn’t seen AI replacing DJs, more enhancing output.
A discussion began about keeping our data safe, but Nick said that we need to be realistic – whatever you are doing online, someone might be using your data right now.
A question was asked by Brian from Cyde Broadcast, he asked if we risk an AI synthesized version of a presenter might be more successful than than the actual presenter and Nick said it is up to us which direction we want to go in, do we want to hire AI or a human being. He added that very soon we will not be able to tell what is AI and what is human and it needs to be part of a discussion about how we see ourselves in this ecosystem.
One thing Philippe said that he would advise everyone to do who would like to use AI more is to take an online course about prompt engineering as AI results are directly proportional to the question you ask, if you are more specific you will get better results and these courses help you to learn the best kinds of questions to ask AI.
image © Afroditi Zaggana
