Meet Denise. She is not a real person, but instead, a personal assistant conjured up by Guile 3D Studio. She used to be a AI secretary, starting Aug 24th, she’ll be promoted to AI DJ at KROV in San Antonio. Denise cost a meager $200 when she was “hired” as a personal assistant to answer phone calls, Google things for people, check emails and make appointments. You know, the same kind of things you have your intern do after you’ve bought him for $200. It was radio personality Dominique Garcia‘s idea to promote Denise to DJ.
Don’t get too excited, Denise can’t actually fill airtime on her own. For the most part, she requires a human writer to script out what she needs to say. How is that any better than a traditional DJ? Money, dear boy. Apparently DJs demand thousands of dollars a year in return for their work, whereas a personal assistant for this personal assistant-turned-DJ can probably be found for only tens of dollars an hour.
The DJs that know about this are probably a little concerned about it, and rightly so. Radio stations and DJs themselves are already facing pressure from about 43,436 sides, including Internet radio, the rise of iTunes and the 99 cent single, podcasts, music streaming services, digital audio ports in cars and people who just plain hate hearing people who sound perky and happy to be alive in the morning. Of course, Denise’s human impersonation is not 100 percent perfect. According to Garcia, Denise can sound a bit robotic at times and Denise doesn’t have the same talent for quick-witted banter that DJs allegedly have. Still, she’s going to be on the radio, which is more than a lot of us can say. It’s just too bad the radio star was killed by the video star (who was subsequently killed by the Internet) years ago.
(via MSNBC Presents Future of Technology)
