ChatGPT Comes For Radio! Introducing RadioGPT
March 30, 2023
Internet communications devastated everything in their path. However, amateur radio operators have not gone anywhere. Among other things, amateur radio operators are preserved as a kind of “parallel world.” Still, some interesting bridges are generated from time to time. One of these is led by William Franzin, who popularized a criteria test based on ChatGPT. Let’s see how.
How does entry into the chatbot, through a radio dialogue, sound?
The latest news about ChatGPT indicates that the OpenAI chatbot has passed the law, economics and medicine tests. This does not make it a pro, but at the same time it leaves us with more questions than answers. Now, what happens if we take ChatGPT out of its component and throw it into completely different territory, say ham radio? Do you have something expensive to give amateur radio operators?
It all starts with receiving a D-STAR voice transmission and converting it to digital audio. The audio goes through a speech recognition system and the result is used as a “question” for ChatGPT. The chatbot responds as usual, but the typing is injected into a typing-speech engine and the artificial voice is transmitted back over the radio. In the demo, William Franzin essentially asks ChatGPT how to obtain an amateur radio license. The chatbot gives a fairly generic answer but not completely wrong. Which sometimes becomes difficult to hear thanks to the robotic voice. ChatGPT assures that with “study and practice,” the acceptance process will be easy.
ChatGPT for its new RadioGPT
This is not William Franzin’s first experiment using chatbots and digital assistants. In May 2020, he did something similar with Google Assistant, Alexa, and Watson by combining a DV Dongle device and the DVTool under Linux. Instead of activating the helper with “Hey Google” or “Hey Alexa,” William set it to respond to “Hey D-Star,” with pretty good results.
RadioGPT allows human DJs to be replaced by bots. This is quite reassuring, given the state of radio. Axios cleveland reports that local company Futuri Media has released a product called RadioGPT. Which in theory can do most of the work of a radio station without human intervention.
According to the website, the product uses robots with GPT-4 technology that can carry out interstitial conversations about music programming, weather and local news, and even respond to listener comments and questions. RadioGPT is also capable of performing tasks that might otherwise be the preserve of interns and entry-level staff. Such as generating blog posts, editing live programs on podcasts, and social media.
According to Axios, the product will debut next month with Alpha Media and Rogers Sports & Media. Which represents more than 250 radio stations used in the United States and Canada. Futuri Media CEO Daniel Anstandig told Axios that the product is designed to “save radio, not compete with it” by filling the hours that stations cannot handle anyway.
“What we want to do is increase the role of a station to fill its schedule with more local and live content”
he said. Anstandig’s point is that, for many radio stations, it’s either AI or nothing. It seems more likely that radio organizations have the opportunity to use this tool (or others like it) as a means of minimizing their own labor and the audio industry pipeline, which is already shrinking.
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