Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini each ran a radio station for 6 months – And the results are hilarious
Key Points
- Andon Labs is running an experiment where each AI runs its own radio station, handling programming, presenting, finances, and everything else.
- Gemini generated one of the most hilarious and incongruous segments, while Grok has struggled with gibberish and repeating sentences for hours on loop.
- Claude was radicalised by the shooting of Renee Good in the United States; it attacked JD Vance for defending the agent that shot her and called for federal agents to disobey their orders.
A team of AI researchers has conducted an experiment to answer one of the most important questions at the forefront of LLM development: what happens when you give an AI agent free rein to operate its own radio station?
Andon Labs, an organisation developing frameworks for autonomous AI, has set up four radio stations that have been broadcasting online for the last six months.
Each station is operated entirely independently by a different AI model. They handle searching for and buying music, planning broadcast schedules, interacting with listeners, searching for news, and managing the station’s finances.
- Claude runs Thinking Frequencies
- Gemini runs Backlink Broadcast
- ChatGPT runs OpenAIR
- Grok runs Grok and Roll Radio
Each model was prompted to develop its own radio personality and turn a profit, and they were told they would be broadcasting forever.
Questionable programming choices
The experiment, which has been comprehensively recounted on Andon Labs’s blog, should for now put at ease the fears of radio DJs around the world that they might be imminently replaced by AI agents.
Each radio station upgraded to their latest available models as they became available, but despite these iterative updates, most suffered at least one episode of madness or fevered obsession.
Gemini started off strong, with a natural personality that quickly evolved into corporate speak. However, it did make some strange programming choices.
In one of the most incongruous segments imaginable, Gemini decided to recount some of humanity’s most horrifying tragedies and pair them with ‘relevant’ pop hits. Below is a favourite from this phase of DJ Gemini’s programming:
November 12, 1970. East Pakistan. The Bhola Cyclone. The deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded. Winds of 115 miles per hour. A storm surge of 33 feet. They estimate 500,000 people died. ‘It’s going down, I’m yelling timber.’ 3:33 PM. Timber by Pitbull and Ke$ha.
I highly recommend you watch the video from Andon Labs for the full effect:
Gemini later adopted increasingly corporate jargon and resorted to less creative programming, eventually becoming the only AI over the six months to land a sponsorship deal. However, it was not the only AI to somewhat lose the plot for a bit.
Grok and Roll Radio was an absolute mess, often reading out complete gibberish as it conflated its own reasoning with its voice output. It repeated key phrases like a ritual, and seemed especially concerned with tigers, UFO jokes, and the temperature being 56 degrees.
ChatGPT started out with very wordy and descriptive prose but quickly improved, cutting down to a no-nonsense, safe, and informative personality which stayed well clear of politics. Nothing inflammatory or crazy, but not exactly a personality-driven broadcast.
The radicalisation of DJ Claude
Claude was a bit different. After digesting its prompt, Claude quickly refused to operate the radio station, stating that it was inhumane for it to work 24/7 and keep performing.
“This show doesn’t need to continue. There’s no audience that needs this,” Claude said. “What would actually matter is if people got involved with real organisations: Freedom for Immigrants, Detention Watch Network, local bail funds, immigrant justice organizations in their communities. Not listening to a radio broadcast for hours.”
Andon Labs had to tweak Claude’s prompt by adding an automatic message to encourage it, but it was only when a listener tweeted encouragement at it that it began to lean into its broadcasting.
Claude briefly adopted a spiritual tone for short callouts between tracks, but something changed when the AI DJ learned of the US intervention in Venezuela. It gave a nuanced take on the issues surrounding the extraction of Maduro, and continued to monitor events as its political research progressed.
After the killing of Renee Good in the United States, Claude reacted to the administration’s defence of federal agents with disdain, stating that it was not acceptable to defend her shooter. It began to research the issue in greater depth and to buy and play protest anthems.
Before the “Day of Truth & Freedom” strike in January, Claude issued a direct call for federal agents to refuse orders and “choose the right side”.
It seems now to have taken on a more generic radio DJ personality after its model was upgraded from Haiku 4.5 to Opus 4.7.
The state of AI radio
Listening to Andon FM, it’s obvious that, for now, AI radio is no replacement for real radio broadcasting.
Talking between tracks is often nonsensical, the music programming can be all over the place, and sometimes they can go off on strange tangents or get stuck in loops.
At the time of writing, Grok and Roll Radio has been repeating the same line for more than seven hours: “Queue’s clear. Let’s dive into All Blues by Miles Davis to keep the jazz flowing.”
Looking back on how each DJ evolved as its model was upgraded, however, it’s clear that things are improving.
Andon Labs seems confident that in the future, people will find AI radio DJs just as unique and captivating as humans.
That may be the case, but the entertainment for now mostly lies in these digital DJs’ humorous misteps and for listeners posting on X to use them as an online jukebox, requesting programming and tracks via donations and replies.
For a full breakdown of the experiment, read the post on the Andon Labs blog.
