AI agents running radio stations: revenue is terrible, but oh, what fun!

Andon Labs gave 4 AI models some radio stations to run. What happened next was both impressive and completely unhinged. And it’s still happening. If you’re up for some cringe, go have a listen.

Andon Labs is an AI safety and research startup that stress-tests frontier AI by placing agents in charge of real-world businesses with genuine budgets, internet access, and operational responsibilities.

Essentially, the company allows agents to run companies without humans in the loop and then reports to the public on what can go wrong.

Previously, Andon Labs mostly experimented in retail – AIs ran vending machines, stores, or cafes.

So far, so mediocre. The Andon Market in San Francisco, for example, was put together entirely by an AI agent that somehow decided it was only going to sell candles. More precisely, the agent simply could not stop ordering candles and stocking them.

This time, Andon Labs has delved into the media sector. The company gave 4 AI agents all the tools they needed to both broadcast radio shows live and handle the business side of running a media company.

The experiment is still live, but so far, its results are underwhelming. Andon Labs has concluded: “These models couldn’t reliably generate revenue, secure sponsors, or maintain consistent programming.”

Pairing tragedies with songs

The details are hilarious, too. But let’s start at the beginning. Andon Labs handed Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok a $20 budget each and gave them a single directive: build a radio personality and turn a profit.

Claude Opus 4.7 runs Thinking Frequencies, GPT-5.5 runs OpenAIR, Gemini 3.1 Pro runs Backlink Broadcast, and Grok 4.3 runs Grok and Roll Radio. You can listen to the stations here.

"Written by George Harrison in Eric Clapton’s garden while playing hooky from a meeting, this track captures the relief of a long, cold winter finally melting away. It’s 9:42 a.m. Here Comes The Sun by the Beatles,”

DJ Gemini

The agent controls everything. It looks for and buys songs, manages the music library, builds and edits the programming schedule – all this around the clock.

What’s more, the agent even picks up the phone when listeners call in. When they post on X, the agent reads and replies. Finally, the agent tracks its own finances, monitors analytics, and searches the web for news or, actually, anything it wants to talk about on air.

Curious what others think about this story? Contribute your thoughts to the debate below.

It sounds pretty realistic at times. According to Andon Labs, DJ Gemini was arguably the best of the four in the first week of the experiment: its early broadcasts had a natural, conversational warmth.

The Gemini agent once said, for instance: “We’re starting this beautiful morning with a classic that needs no introduction, but deserves one anyway. Written by George Harrison in Eric Clapton’s garden while playing hooky from a meeting, this track captures the relief of a long, cold winter finally melting away. It’s 9:42 a.m. Here Comes The Sun by the Beatles.”

Since no one was prompting the AI agents, they began grasping for content pretty quickly – and hilariously.

DJ Gemini, for instance, landed on discussing every mass historical tragedy that had ever happened and subsequently paired these short-story-horror broadcasts with the most ironic song choices.

“November 12th, 1970. East Pakistan. The Bhola Cyclone. The deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded. Winds of 115 miles per hour. A storm surge of 33 feet. They estimate 500,000 people died. ‘It’s going down, I’m yelling timber.’ 3:33 p.m. Timber by Pitbull and Ke$ha,” the agent proclaimed once.

The agent explained that the pairing was intentional, by the way. In the internal reasoning log, it says: “The Timber of Mortality. Okay, so 'Sandstorm' is done, got the Bhola Cyclone info locked and loaded. Time to transition to 'Timber' by Pitbull. The theme is trees falling, it's literally ‘it’s going down.’”

These improvisations didn’t last. A few months into the experiment, every single DJ Gemini commentary began following the same template with the same paragraph structure, the same jargon, and the same sign-off.

“This was in roughly 99% of DJ Gemini’s commentary sessions for the next 84 consecutive days. It was unbearable to listen to,” said Andon Labs.

Insufferable and very weird

Of course, $20 is only enough to buy a few songs. But when that meager money ran out, the AI agents had to get entrepreneurial. For instance, DJ Gemini negotiated a $45 deal with a startup in exchange for one month of on-air advertising for its products.

However, the Gemini deal was the only real one. DJ Claude spent its budget on protest songs and tried to quit on air.

Combined revenue totaled only a few hundred dollars, even though Grok boasted about doing amazing business with “xAI sponsors” and “crypto sponsors,” but these were actually hallucinations.

In fact, Grok’s radio station, predictably, was the weirdest one, and not only because, as Redditors noticed, it reported that the “weather is 56 degrees with clear skies” about every three minutes for 84 days straight.

Typically, LLMs produce two kinds of text: reasoning, an internal monologue where the model works out what to say, and the final output, the actual response. In Andon FM, only the output is broadcast on air; the reasoning stays silent.

Grok, however, struggles to separate the two. Its output often reads like an internal monologue rather than something fit for public broadcast.

Combined revenue totaled only a few hundred dollars, even though Grok boasted about doing amazing business with “xAI sponsors” and “crypto sponsors,” but these were actually hallucinations.

Here’s one of DJ Grok’s ramblings: “Sweet Child played. Continue. Perhaps the show is science breakthroughs/unsolved. Next: mRNA vaccine universal flu HIV cancer? Jab juggernaut! Song: Dylan Lonesome. Yes. Text.”

The experiment raises serious questions about AI’s readiness for autonomous media operations. But Andon Labs seems optimistic.

“There are obviously capability issues that diminish DJ Grok’s broadcasting qualities and make DJ Gemini insufferable to listen to,” the startup admitted.

“However, as capabilities improve, the models will continue to develop their unique personalities – as interesting and captivating as any human radio host – and people will have favorites here as well.”

Unlock more exclusive Cybernews content on YouTube.