Connections in a Sea of AI Content
What’s News: To the relief of thousands of human bloggers, webmasters, and content creators, Google announced this week it is changing its algorithm to take on AI-generated clickbait. Set aside the dystopian vision of AI fighting AI; Google’s search division understands users have needs for human-generated content and human connection, and they also know how a platform’s quality can get lost when AI bots flood it with permutations on original content.
Take for instance what’s happening on Spotify. Every day 120,000 new songs are added to the platform. That’s not 120,000 songs by artists, but 120,000 tracks, many of which are AI generated “functional music” with names like “Rain on Windshield.” But these songs are in the long-tail of listens. At the top of Spotify’s charts are, of course, songs by humans.
But that doesn’t mean that there’s no place for AI in our content creation to deepen our relationships with our audiences using original content. From idea starters, to sound effects, to video editing, to chatbots, there are tools in this newsletter that can enhance content created by broadcasters that can help connect with audiences and generate revenue.
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KCBI is one of the few radio stations in the world to have a chatbot on its website. Emily Haring Thevarajoo, digital director for the station, discusses how this innovation is serving its audience of thousands with a personal touch.
If you have a tip, product, or an AI hallucination you’d like to share, please reach out to me: chris@g5j.8ac.myftpupload.com.
AI EDGE – INTERVIEW – Emily Haring Thevarajoo at KCBI, Dallas
Emily Haring Thevarajoo is the digital content director at KCBI in Dallas, a 100,000-watt Christian music and talk station serving a massive footprint in the DFW metroplex and soon the Waco/Temple area. Emily came to radio after working on the agency side of the media business. Last year, she spearheaded the launch of the KCBI Faith Assistant, a homepage-placed AI-powered chatbot, by partnering with BibleChat.ai. The KCBI Faith Assistant serves to help the station’s audience not only learn more about the station, but it is a religious concierge that can answer questions about faith and the Bible and can also direct users to additional religious resources. Emily spent time discussing how the chatbot works. – Chris
CB: Tell me about KCBI Faith Assistant.
EHT: It’s an open language-based model, but it is informed by every kind of translation of the Bible and tons of theological content. It can get pretty deep about questions about the Bible, and it crawls our website and can give any station information. We give it our data streams and line-up so users can see what songs and content we’re airing. It can answer any questions about KCBI, AND it is also a Bible expert.
CB: How has the user uptake been?
EHT: In the first two months, we had almost 200 total users with about 1,200 total messages being sent back and forth. Most people enter into a conversation with it.
People ask a lot of general questions: How can I cancel my donation? How can I make a donation? What played this morning at 8:00 on my way to work? Where are your events?
If we get prayer requests, the AI directs them to a prayer wall. We train this AI to specifically not to pray for people; it can only direct people towards our prayer center where we have real people that pray for them.
CB: Tell me more about its religious functionality.
EHT: KCBI is the Bible-centered station. We want to provide answers to questions that people have about our ministry and also about the Bible at large. So you can ask it anything about the Bible, and it can answer questions about faith and the Bible right within the conversation.
People ask a question about like, “Hey, my daughter is getting bullied at school. What can I do?” We have a resource called “Praying Scriptures Over your Children,” and it’ll say, “Hey, this this e-book might help you as you think about how to pray for your daughter.” Or it may say, “We’ve got an e-book that’s called ‘Scripture for Times of Uncertainty.’”
CB: What has the listener feedback on AI been?
EHT: On air we are very careful to not actually call this an AI-tool. This is the KCBI Faith Assistant — a conversational tool on our website where you can go ask questions about KCBI or the Bible. You’ll see a little button at the bottom of the tool that says exactly what it is. It says it’s an AI tool. We don’t hide it, but we don’t broadcast that either.
We built this knowing the general attitude around AI is still very skeptical and people are kind of wary of it. But we saw the pros more than the cons of this tool. I figured that I would need to field angry calls and messages, but we’ve only gotten positive feedback.
Online, people direct their negative feedback to this AI more than they do to us, and for the most part, the AI can turn their attitude around. We had one person who started the chat saying AI is terrible. You can’t replace the person. This is AI from the devil.
The AI was able to change their mind by pulling from scripture and presenting a real theological view. It basically said, “AI is the man-made tool. Man has used tools for good and for evil since the beginning of time.”
We’re doing our best to try to use this tool for good.
AI EDGE – NEWS FROM THE BIG DOGS
Google Debuts New Text-to-Image Generation Tool
A week after disabling image generation in its mainline Gemini AI tool, Google’s AI Test Kitchen launched a new image generation tool using the Imagen 2 AI engine. ImageFX is free to use with a Google account, and offers multiple image results per prompt and prompt suggestions if you want to modify the results. Additionally, all images are invisibly-watermarked as being AI-generated. Check it out here.
Our take: The image generation was not dissimilar to other engines, but the results were slower to generate than with other tools.
Adobe Previews Generative Audio Tools
Adobe’s Project Music GenAI Control team just released a video showing the AI-generated audio coming soon to Creative Cloud. The text-to-sound and sound-to-sound tools allow for creators to generate anything from a symphonic accompaniment to a hip-hop beat. Check out the example here.
Why this is important
When released, these generative capabilities will certainly be integrated into Adobe Audition in a similar way to image generation is now standard in Photoshop, making content creation lot easier on a station’s video and audio production team(s). Unfortunately, no release date has been announced.
AI EDGE NEWS TO KNOW
Madonna Uses AI Video Imagery in New Concert Tour
For an artist whose career has always embraced the innovative, it’s not surprising that the video images used in her Celebration Tour are generated by the AI service Runway. “Sasha Kasiuha, content director for Madonna’s Celebration Tour, confirmed, “We tried CGI. It looked pretty bland and cheesy and she didn’t like it, and then we decided to try AI.”
AI EDGE ‘WORST PRACTICES’
GameScent’s AI Creates Smells to Match Your Video Gameplay
The future of immersive gameplay just got a whiff of something extraordinary. GameScent dropped a bombshell: an AI-driven scent device that’ll make your nostrils tingle and your senses soar. The patent-pending GameScent adapter syncs with your gaming rig, analyzing in-game audio cues. When you’re sprinting through a rainforest, it releases the earthy aroma of damp leaves. Engage in a high-speed car chase? Get a whiff of burning rubber. And yes, even those less pleasant odors—like swamp muck or alien slime—are fair game. Read more
Along with his duties at Jacobs Media, Chris develops revenue opportunities for jācapps’ mobile apps clients.
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