A state-run Polish radio station came under severe criticism after it used artificial intelligence to generate programming, forcing the station to quickly end the project.
According to a report by TVP World, OFF Radio Kraków announced a three-month run in which its programs would be hosted entirely by AI-generated characters. It started with an "interview" in which an AI-generated journalist talked to an AI-generated version of deceased Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska.
The AI version of the famous author answered questions about this year's Nobel Prize-winning author, Han Kang. The station also proposed a similar interview with an AI version of Józef Piłsudski, Poland's chief of state when it gained independence in 1918.
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Once the three months elapsed, the plan was to replace the AI segments with a new crop of young journalists.
However, Radio Kraków's editor-in-chief, Marcin Pulit, elected to end the project after just one week.
"We assumed that this project would last a maximum of three months. However, after just one week, we have already gathered so many observations, opinions, and conclusions that we decided it was pointless to continue it," Pulit said. "We are pioneers, and the fate of pioneers can be difficult. They are criticized, ridiculed. We have had to deal with such reactions in recent days."
AI has been the subject of considerable controversy in recent months. Amazon generated backlash over its decision to use AI-generated recaps of shows and movies on Prime Video, while Google's Gemini AI has become infamous for frequently incorrect results from searches. Even scholastic research isn't immune, as a prominent academic journal was caught having published a paper that had clearly been written with an AI model.
On top of the problem with using AI to replace creative jobs, the technology also has a profound environmental impact. The large language models used in chatbots consume a huge amount of power and water, and the energy used often comes from sources that produce planet-warming pollution, such as coal and natural gas.
In this instance, Pulit said the purpose of the project was to "be a voice in the debate on the opportunities and threats posed by the development of artificial intelligence."
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