Radio CADA passed AI off as human in a 4-hour daily show for 6 months

Imagine that every day you listen to your favorite radio host, sing along with her, and enjoy her energetic manner of broadcasting. And then suddenly you find out that she doesn’t actually exist. This is exactly what happened to Australian listeners of radio station CADA. Which for a whole six months broadcast a show with an artificial host, without informing its audience about this.

The mysterious radio host named Toi hosted the music show “Weekdays with Toi” on the station’s website and in the iHeartRadio app. She worked for 4 hours daily from Monday to Friday. Lifting listeners’ spirits and presenting musical compositions. On the show’s page, one could read, I quote. “If your day looks a bit boring, let Toi and CADA radio be the energy and atmosphere that will lift your mood.” But nowhere was it mentioned that Toi is a voice created by artificial intelligence.

The truth was revealed only after a writer from Sydney, Stephanie Coombs, became interested in the radio host’s identity. “What is Toi’s last name? Who is she? Where did she come from? There is no biography or additional information about the woman who supposedly hosts this show,” Coombs wrote in her blog.

After this question, enthusiasts conducted an analysis of the audio recordings and discovered that the host’s voice sounds absolutely identical in different episodes. For example, the phrase “old school” was pronounced exactly the same in several different shows, which is impossible for a living person.

As it turned out, Toi’s voice was created using technologies from ElevenLabs. Which specializes in voice cloning using artificial intelligence. The project manager of the Australian Radio Network, Fayad Tome, later admitted to using artificial intelligence in creating the character of Toi.

In his LinkedIn post, which was later deleted, Tome wrote that Toi “sounds like a real person” and has real fans. Despite the fact that she is not a real personality.