You Versus The Bots

Okay, then. Exactly how replaceable ARE you?

We've established that most people in radio have to be at least a little concerned about being replaced by AI. The best we can say is that "AI will never have that connection with listeners that humans have," which is not exactly proven fact at this early stage. But we've seen the first on-air implementation of AI involve scraping show prep and reading it off in an almost-lifelike voice, and we can all chuckle to ourselves and think, well, nobody's gonna want to hear that. Until they do, that is, or they don't care.

If all you do is what the AI is doing -- grab some show prep, read 'em into the computer, you're done -- then you ARE replaceable, and, honestly, you should expect it. We keep saying that there are elements to human communication that are hard for AI to replicate, but that's mostly true if the human elements you're using on the air are generic. What CAN'T be easily replicated are the things that make you, um, you.

Let me backtrack for a bit. One thing I've heard on many convention panels about personality radio is the debate over how much of your personal life you allow to seep into your on-air work, and that's now slopped over into social media as well. Do you voice opinions? Do you talk about your daily life? Or do you stick to celebrity gossip and leave it at that? There are arguments on both sides. Obviously, if you're a talk radio host, you'll be voicing political opinions, because that's your job. But the personal stuff becomes stickier when you take security into account. Too much personal information about where you live, your family, your vacations, and you're taking a risk that someone might use that for evil. On the other hand, if you're just parroting TMZ, Us Weekly, and the like, or you're just talking about reality shows, AI can do that, and as it improves, it'll probably do that as well as you can.

You're right to be concerned. Decades of music PDs and consultants drilling the idea that talk on music stations is PPM Death and generic voice tracking have gotten us here. Oh, and for talk radio, so has sticking to the standard political talk playbook -- do you think for a moment that if you programmed AI to scrape opinions from a bunch of conservative websites and social media, you couldn't ultimately come up with an artificial talk show that was close to what's on the air today?

All is not lost, though, unless the industry wants it to be lost. (I'm not sure of anything about that right now.) If hosts put more of themselves into their content instead of just reading what they find on the show prep sheet or on Facebook, AI will have a harder time taking those jobs. AI isn't going to talk about the problem you had finding day care. It's not going to talk about the tough drive to the station this morning. It won't know that despite the clear-and-sunny weather report, you see a few sprinkles in the parking lot outside your studio window. It won't knowledgeably converse about the defense in the third quarter of last night's playoff game. It didn't talk to a local politician and get some inside scoop about a hot local issue. It can pull jokes off a subreddit, but it doesn't know whether those jokes are actually funny. Maybe technology will solve all of that, but until it does -- and it's not close to there yet -- you have a fighting chance against being swallowed whole by AI.

Unless, that is, the industry thinks that what AI does is "good enough." If all you do is what AI can do, it WILL be "good enough." Your job is to be better than that, put more of yourself and your individual personality, warts and all, into your shows, and then hope and pray that the business recognizes that if it's going to remain viable, it's going to have to offer something better than it does today. Otherwise, we'll be welcoming our new AI overlords.

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Not being AI doesn't mean you don't need ANY show prep. Unlike AI, though, you need prep upon which you can add your own personal spin, and that's exactly what you'll find at All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page. The topics, not the spin. Click here for that, and you can also follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics and find every story individually linked to the appropriate item.

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You can follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well. And I'm on Mastodon at @pmsimon@c.im.

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I try to make what I do irreproducible by AI, myself. I do that by writing stuff no AI platform would WANT to write. Works for me.

Perry Michael Simon
Senior Vice President/Editor-in-Chief and News-Talk-Sports-Podcasting Editor
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
Twitter @pmsimon
Mastodon @pmsimon@c.im