Two years ago, when I introduced AI Ashley to KBFF in Portland, it wasn’t just because I thought it would be clever, buzzy, or disruptive (though, let’s be honest—she was all three); I did it because media…must.
Just like the visionaries who moved us from AM to FM, from FM to satellite, and from satellite to streaming (heck, even The Daily Bugle went online), I happened to be in the chair when the next leap came along. And it doesn’t take artificial intelligence to recognize that being first wins.
Much like the eighth-grade dance, once one person gets the nerve to move, everyone else joins in. So I jumped—headfirst—even if I wasn’t totally sure there was water in the pool.
So… how did the audience react?
Here’s the unexpected twist that the lovers of prize wheels and family-four- packs don’t want to hear : No pitchforks. No protests. You have to understand, in a city like Portland, not having a protest is the bigger story.
Most listeners assumed we were already using AI. After all, AI drives their cars, suggests their groceries, writes their kid’s college essays (sorry, Mom and Dad your kiddos ain’t dat smart). To the radio audience its background tech, no more controversial than Alexa reminding them to buy more toothpaste or Netflix recommending Ginny & Georgia (which, as I found out, has nothing to do with cocktails or Atlanta).
While parts of the radio industry were frothing about how I was supposedly ushering in its demise—how I had betrayed my values, my career, and my humanity—the average listener mostly said, “Cool. Do you have any free Morgan Wallen tickets?”
Open The Pod Bay Doors, Ashley
Our internal team and the futurists at Futuri weren’t just supportive, they went full Stars Hollow. Dylan Salisbury, our PD at KBFF, and host Asheley Elzinga (aka “AI Ashley”) charged forward with me, rewriting the rules instead of reading the old playbook. Eyes up, sleeves rolled, no rearview mirror — while the skeptics were still looking for the ‘on’ button and logging in to send a mean tweet.
The company gave us room to try, room to take risk, room to do something that had never been done before, room to live above the research.
Jason Kidd at Virtual Jock, Jacobs Media, Bobby Bones, and even a few formerly trolling Instagram accounts showed love. I told our team and every journalist who asked that this would age well.
Spoiler: it has.
When we went global-viral, the station, the company and the industry became the conversation.
But the best part? For the first time in a very long time, radio was being talked about—in tech blogs, at dinner tables, on Wall Street, and on Main Street. To have played a part in making that happen is one of my proudest career milestones, and that’s saying something because I’ve given away free Morgan Wallen tickets.
If I could Marty McFly it…
Honestly, I wouldn’t change much.
We never replaced an air personality with AI. This wasn’t a cost-cutting strategy. It was a relevance amplifier, a way to modernize a medium that is still caller 9-ing everything (just text me, bro).
Before Spotify launched an AI DJ. Before will.i.am debuted his AI co-host on SiriusXM. The old medium beat the new medium. A station near Happy Valley beat Silicon Valley. Futuri & Phil Becker – the executive who will gladly make a Happy Valley reference – were first.
And from the beginning, we were transparent. Every time AI content aired, we told the audience. Long before Meta and TikTok added “AI-generated” disclosure tags, we were letting the audience know because if you’re gonna AI you have to say it… (I should have had AI write that one).
If anything, I’d go bigger now: AI-hosted videos, podcasts, visual art, side-channel content, maybe even a robot in a station van giving out merch. And the irony? It all started on a station called Live 95.5 and by embracing AI, we became more live, more local, more immediate, and more responsive than before.
rAIdo
AI isn’t here to beat humans. It’s here to remind us what makes humans matter.
That’s emotion. Vulnerability. Lived experience. The off-script, overshared, “did-they-just-say-that?” kind of magic.
Because let’s be real: the “That-was-Ed-Sheeran” style of DJing? That’s been obsolete for years. RDS and Shazam quietly replaced that value proposition a long time ago. So no, AI didn’t kill the liner reading on-air personality. Metadata did.
Don Draper Would…
A lot of our clients were already using AI in their own businesses to create efficiency, scale content, and reach more customers. They didn’t just understand what we were doing, they respected it. Business owner to business owner.
We had no cancellations because we were honest. We were early. And most importantly, it worked.
AI Ashley brought in new sampling. That meant more ears, more engagement, more customers, more impressions, more heard ads, more, more, more. In advertising, “more” is their “rosebud.”
That’s not just futuristic. That’s effective.
Up next… (Phil of The Future)
Next week, I’ll share how radio can use AI beyond “voice-tricking.” Learn new ways to maximize music and marketing, to cultivate coaching and content, to reimagine revenue, ratings, and recruitment, and empower promotion, production, and people.
(Also that paragraph works great as a pre-show vocal warmup — try saying it five times fast before your mic’s hot.)
AI isn’t radio CPR, it’s an entirely new pulse.
By Phil Becker