In Australia, a radio station named CADA secretly ran an AI-generated DJ called "Thy" for six months straight.
Listeners thought they were hanging out with a cool, real human host.
Reality?
It was a science project with a Spotify playlist.
Nobody knew.
Nobody suspected.
Nobody signed up for it.
Welcome to the biggest accidental AI social experiment of 2025!
💬 What the station Is Saying
After being exposed, the station said it was "an exciting experiment in technology."
(Translation: “Oops. We didn’t think you’d notice, and honestly, you didn’t.”)
No apology for the sneak attack.
Just a lot of "It’s the future!" energy while real DJs everywhere stared silently into their coffee cups.
🧊 What That Means (In Human Words) Translation:
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AI can now talk to you, vibe with you, laugh with you — and you might never know it’s fake.
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Companies can now replace a human presence without ever telling you.
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And "trust in media"? Yeah, it's currently lying face down on the floor whispering, "Play Wonderwall."
The tech isn’t scary.
The people who forgot transparency still matters — those are the ones we should be side-eyeing.
🔚 Bottom Line:
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Who: CADA Radio Station in Australia
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What: Ran a fake AI radio host named Thy for six months, never disclosed it
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Tech Used: ElevenLabs voice cloning
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Why People Are Mad: Being part of an experiment without even a heads up
Want to Read More?
👉 Check TechCrunch’s Coverage
🕶️ Frozen Light Team Perspective
Let’s not sugarcoat it:
This wasn’t “innovative.”
This was playing Sims with real human trust.
If you want to run a futuristic AI DJ?
Awesome. We’re into it.
But maybe — just maybe — tell your audience they’re part of your grand tech experiment.
Because here’s the thing:
People aren’t mad because the DJ was a robot.
People are mad because they didn’t know they were the lab rats. 🐭🎶
This wasn’t an AI problem.
This was a human ego problem.
And news flash:
When you hide the wires, you’re not building trust — you’re sawing the floor out from under it.
Biggest lesson from this “exciting experiment”?
👉 The future will absolutely have AI voices.
👉 But whether people trust them will depend entirely on whether they trust you.
