Good news for radio DJs. “Chances are good you will not be replaced by a bot anytime soon. The coast is clear, the dust has settled, and hopefully, your industry nightmare is over.”
That’s the opinion of consultant Fred Jacobs, who titles his latest blog post “Relax, Radio DJs – The AI Scare Is Over (I Think…).”
Jacobs commented ahead of an appearance at a programming conference and he teased findings of his company’s annual study of commercial radio personalities in the U.S.
He doesn’t mean to imply that jocks can stop worrying about corporate layoffs or job insecurity.
But based on comments from about 500 air personalities, Jacobs concludes: “Paranoia about artificial intelligence ravaging the radio industry like a tech pandemic is dialed down from last year. In fact, more personalities this year understand how AI can help build their brands. And many would be open to licensing their precious voices to a company AI initiative if conditions and compensation were satisfactory.”
He said he can only think of three instances of “droids as DJs,” and two are outside radio. Radio World did find a few more instances in our recent AI ebook. But Fred Jacobs writes that “predictions about the death of human DJs since the coming of this technology have been greatly exaggerated – and widely hyped often by those trying to sell you their ‘DJ in a box.’”
