That Radio DJ Might be a Robot.

Andy Chanley is a radio DJ at Southern California’s public radio station 88.5 KCSN. He has been in the business for 32 years.

Now thanks to advances in artificial intelligence technology his voice will carry on hosting in many other shows and places; and long after he hangs up his DJ cap.

In a demonstration for Reuters the robot designed by Artificial Neural Disk-Jockey says; “I may be a robot, but I still love to rock” in a voice that was hard to distinguish from Chanley’s.

Up until now, our phones and speakers have been talking to us for years, but the voices we hear are monotone; so this is a lot different.

Seattle-based AI start-up Well-Said Labs says it has fine-tuned the technology to create over 50 real human voice avatars like ANDY to date; where the producer just needs to type in text to create the narration.

Zack Zalon CEO of Los Angeles-based start-up Super Hi-Fi plans to integrate ANDY into their AI platform. So instead of just a music playlist, ANDY will DJ the experience; introduce songs and talk about them.

The next step will be for the AI to automate the text created by humans as well. “That’s really the triumvirate that we think is going to take this to the next level,” Zalon said.

This achievement could raise concerns of deep fakes as AI’s perfect their mimicking of people in real time.

That scenario has been factored in; and comes with a warning.

“On a weekly basis, we have a team of content moderators that will cancel accounts,” said Martín Ramírez, head of growth at Well-Said. “If you’re creating content that is not in alignment with our values and our ethical claims, goodbye; it is that straightforward for us.”

The start-up’s policy is once the voice avatar is created they will manage the commercial agreement at the voice owner’s request.

Voice avatars are doing more than DJ work however; they are used in corporate training materials; even to read audiobooks.

For Andy Chanley, leaving a voice avatar behind has extra significance since his recovery from Stage 2 lymphoma; which he was diagnosed with two years ago.

There’s this idea of posterity at work for sure, of living on in a broader sense, when his reasons are a lot more personal and emotional.

“It was perhaps the way that my 11 and six-year-old kids, if things didn’t turn out the way I wanted, might never forget what I sound like.”

“Elvis Presley fed his family a long time after he was gone. Maybe this is, you know, somehow what might send my kids to college someday.”