Australian radio host is actually AI, and no one knew until now

An Australian radio station used Elevenlabs to generate an artificial intelligence (AI) host called Thy, which has been used for months without anyone knowing.

CADA, a radio station that broadcasts across western Sydney, has been using an AI host for about six months.

You can catch the AI host, “Thy,” every weekday at 11 a.m. as it presents roughly four hours of hip-hop, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

What’s curious about the AI radio host is that it wasn’t disclosed on the Australian Radio Network’s website that the radio station uses artificial intelligence.

The webpage only says that listeners can tune in every weekday between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. when they’re “at work, driving around, doing the commute on public transport, or at uni.”

Stephanie Coombes of “The Carpet” weekly culture newsletter, questioned whether Thy was in fact real.

It was revealed that the radio station used Elevenlabs, an AI audio platform, to create the audio for Thy.

While the AI audio might not be real, the voice was crafted using the likeness of a real employee in the Australian Radio Network’s finance team.

An Australian Radio Network spokesperson told The Sydney Morning Herald that the network has been “trialling AI audio tools on CADA using Thy. This is a space being explored by broadcasters globally, and the trial has offered some valuable insights.”

The spokesperson told The Sydney Herald that Thy is “reinforced by the power of real personalities.”