Polish Radio Station Replaces Human Hosts with AI-Generated Presenters to Simulate Interviewing Deceased Poet Wisława Szymborska

Polish radio station Off Radio Krakow replaced human presenters with AI-generated ones and aired a simulated interview with the deceased poet Wisława Szymborska. The AI-driven experiment aimed to attract younger listeners but led to job losses for former hosts. In response to the public backlash, the station ended its use of AI presenters.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 6 Socioeconomic & Environmental
• Primary risk subdomain: 6.3 Economic and cultural devaluation of human effort

The deployment of AI presenters to replace dismissed human journalists sparked widespread fears of creative workers being made redundant by machines, devaluing human effort in the media sector.

Additional risk subdomains

• 3.1 False or misleading information: The station broadcasted a completely fabricated interview with a deceased poet, putting machine-generated words into her mouth.
• 1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation: Activists protested the station's use of a virtual non-binary presenter to represent the LGBTQ+ community, arguing it misrepresented them and shut out real human voices.

Causal factors

• Entity: Human
• Intent: Intentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The incident was caused by the intentional decision of the radio station's management to dismiss human journalists and deploy AI-generated presenters post-deployment.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Risk Level 3: The incident involves the use of AI-generated content, specifically synthetic voices (deepfakes) and virtual presenters, which fall under Limited Risk and require transparency obligations.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: ChatGPT, image-generating programs, speech synthesis software (ElevenLabs, Leonardo.Ai, OpenAI)
• AI purpose: Voice Generation; Image Generation
• Behaviour type: Assistant
• Alleged developer: OpenAI, Leonardo AI, ElevenLabs
• Alleged deployer: Off Radio Krakow, Mariusz Marcin Pulit
• Alleged harmed parties: Wisława Szymborska, Off Radio Krakow employees, Off Radio Krakow audience, Mateusz Demski, Lukasz Zaleski

Harm severity

Highest direct severity in any category: Minor. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Privacy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Minor
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Differential treatment

Reported: The report explicitly describes concerns regarding the representation of minority groups by AI avatars.

Directly caused: The station used a virtual non-binary presenter to speak on LGBTQ+ issues, which activists argued marginalized real human voices from that group.

Indirectly caused: N/A

Inferred additional harm: N/A

Psychological

Reported: The report explicitly describes anger, fury, and distress among the dismissed journalists and the public.

Directly caused: N/A

Indirectly caused: Dismissed journalists and members of the creative community experienced significant distress, anxiety, and fury over the prospect of being replaced by automated systems.

Inferred additional harm: N/A

Epistemic

Reported: The report explicitly describes epistemic harm through the broadcasting of a fabricated interview.

Directly caused: The station broadcasted a completely fabricated interview with the deceased poet Wislawa Szymborska, putting machine-generated words into her mouth.

Indirectly caused: N/A

Inferred additional harm: N/A

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 12
• People reportedly exposed: 8000

Potential causes

Management

• Prioritizing novelty over ethics: Management launched the experiment to spark debate and boost low ratings.
• Dismissal of human journalists: Station terminated off-staff journalists to cut costs before deploying AI.

Technology

• AI voice synthesis of deceased: ElevenLabs voice synthesis was used to replicate a deceased poet's voice.
• Generative content fabrication: ChatGPT generated a fake interview, putting bland words in the poet's mouth.
• AI-generated avatars: Leonardo.Ai generated fictional personas to replace human journalists.

Data Inputs

• Lack of authentic inputs: The interview used generated text instead of historical transcripts.
• Fictional biographical data: Station published fake bios and photos of nonexistent AI presenters.

Human Factors

• Public fear of human replacement: Public and former employees feared AI would eliminate creative industry jobs.
• Ethical objections by journalists: Journalists felt faking interviews with the dead breached professional ethics.
• Activist backlash on representation: LGBTQ+ activists objected to a virtual avatar representing real struggles.

Process and Methods

• Inadequate ethical review: No process existed to evaluate the ethics of simulating dead public figures.
• Misleading initial presentation: The station first aired the interview without clearly labeling it as fake.

Regulatory Environment

• Absence of AI legislation: Polish Parliament was still discussing laws to regulate AI usage in media.
• Weak public broadcasting oversight: Regulators failed to prevent the deployment of synthetic presenters.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The reports provide clear, consistent, and detailed accounts of the radio station's experiment, the specific AI tools used, the public reaction, and the subsequent termination of the project. There is little ambiguity regarding the sequence of events or the nature of the public outcry.
• Ambiguities identified: The exact number of journalists dismissed prior to the experiment is not specified, though individual cases are discussed.

A Polish public radio station replaced human journalists with AI presenters and broadcasted a fabricated interview with a deceased Nobel laureate. While the incident sparked significant public outcry, ethical debates, and minor economic disruption for the displaced staff, it was a localized domestic experiment with negligible to minor national security implications.

• Overall national security impact: Minor
• Response level: Moderate
• Scope: Single nation
• Primary target: Poland
• Alleged perpetrator: Off Radio Krakow management

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. The radio station terminated the AI experiment within a week, resolving the immediate controversy, though the strategic precedent of AI replacing creative workers remains.
• Autonomy: Human-supervised. AI tools generated the text, voices, and avatars, but human editors directed the prompts, authorized the broadcasts, and retained ultimate control to terminate the system.
• Novelty: Evolved capability. While synthetic voice generation and AI avatars are established technologies, deploying them to completely replace human journalists in public broadcasting represents an evolved application.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. No physical systems, critical infrastructure, or human safety was threatened during this public radio experiment.
• Information security: Minor. The incident involved synthetic media and a fabricated interview, but it was an overt public relations experiment by a domestic radio station rather than a hostile foreign disinformation campaign.
• Sovereignty: Negligible. No sovereign state authority, electoral systems, or core government decision-making processes were compromised or disrupted.
• Economic security: Negligible. The job displacement of local journalists, while economically damaging to those individuals, does not threaten national financial systems or strategic technological advantages.
• Societal stability: Minor. The incident sparked public backlash, protests, and a petition signed by over 23,000 people, but did not escalate to large-scale civil unrest or systematic human rights violations.