Portland OR Radio: KBFF Adds RadioGPT Hosted Segment

Alpha Media’s Portland-area pop station KBFF Live 95.5 FM became a little less “live” this week.On Tuesday, the radio broadcaster debuted a robotic version of Ashley Elzinga, the midday host of KBFF 95.5 FM, that will be entirely powered by an artificial intelligence product called RadioGPT.

Alpha Media says the launch of “AI Ashley” marks the first time any radio broadcaster in the world has replaced a human disc jockey with a robot, though that claim could not be independently verified by The Desk. That said, it does appear to be the first time that a radio station in the United States has tapped into artificial intelligence to provide listeners with a DJ-like host that is entirely robotic.

While there are concerns that artificial intelligence could lead to job losses in the media space, Elzinga appears thrilled that Alpha Media chose her voice to spearhead this new initiative.

“I am ecstatic to be one of the trailblazers at Alpha Media helping to build an innovative and unique listening experience for our audience,” Elzinga said in a statement on Tuesday. “We have been working hard to ensure AI Ashley is just as live, local, engaging and entertaining as the traditional version, and I can’t wait for our fans to hear both versions of Ashley in action.”

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RadioGPT was introduced earlier this year by Futuri Media, a firm that provides cloud-based sales and engagement solutions powered by artificial intelligence. RadioGPT uses the same machine learning structure as ChatGPT, the text-based conversation robot introduced by research laboratory OpenAI last year.

“The ability for broadcasters to use RadioGPT to localize their on-air content in a turnkey fashion opens up resources for them to deepen their important home-field advantages in new and unique ways,” Daniel Anstandig, the CEO of Futuri Media, said in a statement back in February. “With RadioGPT, the possibilities are endless. With Radio GPT, there should never be a ‘liner card’ or ‘sweeper-only’ air shift again — now everyone can be live and local.”

Alpha Media is an early launch partner for RadioGPT, with the company vowing to find unique ways to deploy the technology in an effort to better serve its listeners and open up new opportunities for revenue growth.