Australian radio station uses AI voice as presenter for months – unnoticed

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For months, tens of thousands of people believed they were listening to a young female presenter on an Australian radio program – without knowing that the voice was actually an artificial intelligence (AI). It was only after several journalists became suspicious that it was revealed that the woman the station presented as the presenter on its website did not actually exist. The outcry is huge.

"Workdays with Thy" is the name of the radio show that the Australian broadcaster CADA presented and continues to present on its website (as of April 26, 2025) –, concealing the fact that the presenter did not even exist, but was actually an artificial intelligence (AI).

Presenter barely spoke

The supposed presenter Thy is also said to have been silent in her show, which ran for four hours every weekday. The author of the Australian newsletter "The Carpet" writes that she hardly heard the young woman speak at all after listening to the program several times. Thy only spoke twice to announce a song and always sounded almost identical.

But what seemed far more suspicious to the author: When "Workdays with Thy" went on air for the first time last November, there was no press release or anything similar from CADA. What was most striking, however, was that Thy did not make any appearances on social media, which is extremely unusual for a young journalist. And instead of a detailed CV, which is usually provided for well-known radio presenters, there was absolutely nothing about Thy.

The suspicion was confirmed when the author said she had spoken to several CADA employees: according to them, no one had ever seen Thy in the editorial office. The supposed new member of the editorial team could not be found in the CADA intranet's people search either. Meanwhile, various other Australian journalists were also trying to find out what Thy was all about. A reporter from the Australian Financial Review finally made the breakthrough: the Australian Radio Network (ARN) media group, to which CADA also belongs, could no longer deny to him that Thy was in fact AI-generated.

The group is constantly researching how new technologies can support great content and improve the listening experience, according to a statement from ARN. The study with Thy not only provided valuable insights, but also underlined the unique value that personalities have in creating truly engaging content, the group emphasizes.

Woman from the finance department was the model

ARN also confirmed that both the woman whose photo was presented as Thy and her voice actually exist. A young employee from the finance department posed for the picture and provided her voice so that the AI voice generator Elevenlabs can generate Thy's moderations based on it. Elevenlabs had already announced a cooperation with ARN in a press release in the past.

The author of The Carpet also pondered whether replacing young radio presenters with AI is even economically viable. Such jobs would pay around 35,000 Australian dollars, she estimates in another blog post. The annual cost to ARN of using Elevenlabs' AI could not really be much less, she believes. Whereas real radio presenters could also do "real radio work", for example in the form of interviews. She did not go into possible scaling effects, such as using an AI to replace several radio presenters – and annual salaries –. Another conceivable advantage would be the avoidance of sick leave with the help of AI, or of dependencies, for example once a presenter has established themselves with a station's audience and can demand far more than 35,000 dollars per year.

Media outcry

These are just some of the business benefits that ARN management may have expected from this approach. The other side of the coin has already been revealed in the past few days: the media outcry and loss of trust that the secret debut of Elevenlabs, aka Thy, is now causing. Teresa Lim, Vice President of the Australian Association of Voice Actors (AAVA), a lobby group for professional voice actors, criticized ARN for not disclosing the use of AI. "Australian listeners deserve honesty and honest disclosure instead of trusting a fake person they think is a real presenter due to a lack of transparency," she also complained on LinkedIn. Numerous media outlets are reporting on the case. Journalists on Nine News Australia, one of the best-known TV news channels in Australia, spoke of the "A.I. radio scandal". In a live broadcast, the presenters agreed that a red line had been crossed when AI not only assisted with individual tasks in journalism, but also took over the job as such. The idea that their faces could also serve as the basis for a moderation AI did not seem to appeal to them.

But Thy is not the only project of its kind. A similar experiment by Polish broadcaster Off Radio Krakow was discontinued after just one week. Those responsible had gone much further: They also generated a fictitious interview with the Polish Nobel Prize winner for literature, Wislawa Szymborska. She had died in 2012. Among other things, the AI commented on events that the writer could never have experienced. This also caused massive criticism.

(nen)