Swiss Station Replaces DJs, Musicians with AI for a Day

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'AI is Taking Your Favorite Radio by Storm': Swiss Station Replaces DJs, Musicians with AI for a Day

By Fortune,  May 3, 2023

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 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., the station said, AI controlled its airwaves. Every 20 minutes, listeners got a reminder.

With an eerie, Sci-Fi movie-like track whirring in the background, a soothing, raspy female voice said: "AI is taking your favorite radio by storm."

"For 13 hours, our digital alter egos have taken the reins, broadcasting their voices and their messages across the airwaves, without mercy or respite," the voice said, at times almost taunting listeners. "The boundaries between human and machine have been blurred, and it's up to you to unravel what's real and fake."

"Our voice clones and AI are here to unsettle, surprise and shake you. And for that matter, this text was also written by a robot. 

From Fortune

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Towards Battery Free IOT

A particular challenge for IOT devices.

Battery-Free IoT: These Tiny Printable Computers Harvest Energy From Radio Waves

In Forbes by John Koetsier

The Wiliot Internet of Things (IoT) tag is a printable chip with random-access memory, read-only memory, onboard sensors, certified Bluetooth, an ARM central-processing unit, flash memory, and secure communications. The chip, made by fabless semiconductor company Wiliot, is battery-free, harvesting energy from ambient radio waves; it can be glued onto antennas, with input supplied from sensors for temperature or motion or even chemical changes, and output in encrypted Bluetooth-based communications. Without a battery, the device is smaller, more environmentally friendly, and less expensive. The tag is expected to eventually cost just pennies, but Wiliot's Stephen Statler said the real advance is lowering the cost of sensing infrastructure, which is critical to realizing a ubiquitous IoT.

The Social Clubhouse

Writeup on 'Clubhouse', mentioned to me in a conversation.    As a possible next big social media thing.   Note the Horowitz support.  As usual,  when I read these things I always end up thinking 'whats the use of that'?    But I have been wrong.

The fatal flaw of Clubhouse   By Mark Schaefer

 Clubhouse appears to be the next hot social media platform.

Backed by the prestigious venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and growing faster than Mark Zuckerberg’s bank account, Clubhouse is a platform where users participate in different chat rooms on a wide range of topics. The conversations are audio-only, and when they finish, they disappear forever. It’s like talk radio on steroids — endless, diverse, inclusive. Wading through Clubhouse can be dizzying because there are so many interesting conversations.

Clubhouse is halfway between a podcast and a party. It’s a facilitated discussion, no make-up required. This is why it will displace at least some podcast consumption — you have a chance to actually participate with the hosts, and that’s special.  ... "

Ant Size Radios

Back to idea of swarming intelligence, but now linking to an Internet of Things.

" ... Scientists at Stanford University have built ant-sized radios that could one day help track patients' temperatures, turn on coffee makers in the morning and prevent forgery.

A Stanford engineering team has built a radio, equipped with sensors, computational units and antennas one-tenth the size of Wi-Fi antennas, that is able to gain all the power it needs from the same electromagnetic waves that carry signals to its receiving antenna. No batteries are required.

These radios, which are designed to compute, execute and relay commands, could be the key to linking gadgets together in the increasingly popular idea of the Internet of Things. ... " 

Radio Gets Second Screen

In AdAge:     Music ID App Soundhound will lead you to supporting screen for music playing nearby,   Will be interesting to see how well the combination of media work.