Polish Radio Station In Trouble For Replacing Journalists With AI, Radio Chief Says Fake News

In the world of artificial intelligence (AI), creators have been given a major boost. This is thanks to the various brilliant and creative capabilities that it brings, coupled with its ability to boost productivity, improve operational efficiency and speed up processes.

This also means that it comes with its own set of controversies, especially when the technology is used by businesses to replace humans in creative jobs.

According to various reports, this was the case with Polish radio station Radio Kraków.

Stationed in the southern city of Kraków, Radio Kraków’s online and DAB+ subsidiary, OFF Radio Kraków recently let go of its staff of journalists.

Weeks after this ordeal, the radio broadcaster relaunched OFF Radio Kraków, this time using AI-generated “presenters” instead, marking “the first experiment in Poland in which journalists... are virtual characters created by AI”.

These characters come in the form of three avatars meant to appeal to young people and will speak about cultural, art and social issues, as well as concerns of LGBTQ+ people.

Named “Emi”, “Kuba” and “Alex”, the AI presenters come with their own backstories and personalities, which are created by human journalists using AI tools, which are also checked and verified before being converted into audio.

Suffice it to say, this move drew major backlash from people within and outside the country, kicking off a journalist and film critic Mateusz Demski (who previously worked at OFF Radio Kraków) to write an open letter protesting “the replacement of employees with artificial intelligence.”

Demski further wrote, “It is a dangerous precedent that hits us all,” adding that this could pave the way “to a world in which experienced employees associated with the media sector for years and people employed in creative industries will be replaced by machines.”

By Wednesday morning, the petition sported over 15,000 signatures along with numerous calls from hundreds of young people who conveyed they wouldn’t like to be a part of such an experiment.  

However, this isn’t the case as per the radio channel’s editor-in-chief, Marcin Pulit, who says the reason for letting go of employees was for a different reason and so was the idea behind the use of AI “presenters”.


“I want to assure all journalists and collaborators of Radio Kraków that I do not intend to replace anyone with artificial intelligence. Today, such a fake message went out in the media space. The sad conclusion is that this fake news was produced by journalists, not artificial intelligence,” said Pulit (translated), in the program Co niesie dzień (What The Day Brings).

Instead, the radio station’s topic of the week was “Artificial intelligence – what does it give us, what does it take away from us?” Here, the station planned to discuss with scientists, media experts, lawyers, philosophers, sociologists and others about the threat that the technology brings.

As for the journalists that were let go, they were relieved because of listenership being “close to zero” and some were guest collaborators who hosted one program a week, as per the radio station. Another reason provided was that the broadcaster needed a different formula for it.

Pulit added, “I will add one more thing: public media are there to also implement new technologies, to experiment with them, of course in an appropriate and controlled way. We try to mark this content as artificially generated as possible.”

Another point of concern was the radio station’s Tuesday broadcast of an interview conducted by an AI-generated presenter that used the voice of Wisława Szymborska, a Polish poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature who died in 2012.

To this, Michał Rusinek, the president of the Wisława Szymborska Foundation, which oversees the poet’s legacy, said that he provided permission and that the poet had a sense of humor and would have liked it.

Do you think it’s wrong for media houses to replace human workers with AI ones? Do you think the use of technology shouldn’t be off-limits in the field of creativity?

Let us know in the comments below!