Robots run the show as Swiss radio tests AI voices for a day

Three months in the making, the French-language station Couleur 3 (Color 3) is touting a one-day experiment using cloned voices of five real, human presenters – in what managers claim is a world first – and never-aired-before music composed almost entirely by computers, not people. — Photo by Jacob Hodgson on Unsplash

GENEVA: The voices sound like well-known personalities, the music features trendy dance beats and hip-hop syncopations, and the jokes and laughter are contagious. But listeners of an offbeat Swiss public radio station repeatedly got the message on Thursday: Today’s programming is brought to you by Artificial Intelligence.

Three months in the making, the French-language station Couleur 3 (Color 3) is touting a one-day experiment using cloned voices of five real, human presenters – in what managers claim is a world first – and never-aired-before music composed almost entirely by computers, not people. From 6am to 7pm, the station said, AI controlled its airwaves. Every 20 minutes, listeners got a reminder.