In the overnight hours on KFMW Rock 108, long after the station’s five staff jockeys have gone home, a DJ with a nose ring, blue hair and full-sleeve tattoos takes over the mic to introduce new hard-rock tracks. There's just one thing about that though — she's not real.
AI DJ Tori became the first artificial-intelligence host at the Hiawatha rock station in 2023. She handles the overnight and early weekend morning shifts — hours that previously aired straight music and commercials with no DJ.
“When there are no live jocks, you don't have somebody to introduce the new, unfamiliar songs, so the benefit I got from Tori is that I get to have somebody introducing the new music during the off hours,” said Program Director Russ Mottla, who created Tori with the help of AI software company Futuri in exchange for commercial airtime.
He believes the experiment is necessary for keeping the station on the cutting edge.
“I've been doing radio for 35 years,” he said. “You run the risk of becoming a dinosaur if you don't take a look at all the technologies and see if there's a way to integrate them into your program.”
Unlike other stations that have faced backlash for secretly swapping human DJs for AI, Rock 108 has been upfront about Tori from the start. Hosts refer to her on air as “AI DJ Tori,” and she even has her own bio on the station’s website.
While Mottla describes her actual AI “personality” as “dry,” the all-male air staff has taken the liberty of building one for her. Mottla selected her voice and feeds her pre-written promos (many created with help from ChatGPT), which feature raunchy humor and self-aware references to Tori's artificial origins. Staff-generated AI images of Tori appear alongside NSFW memes, promos and dad jokes across the station’s social platforms.
“We made all kinds of crazy social media pictures of her in different situations," Mottla said. "We covered her in tattoos and put a nose ring on her, because that's what a rock listener might envision a female DJ to look like, and we just used her as another personality element of the radio station, but a fake one."
Tori has even made an in-person “appearance” at an event hosted by Midwest Shooting, a local gun shop that became an on-air sponsor after hearing her on the airwaves. A generated image of her face was taped to a mannequin outfitted with buttons visitors could press to hear her speak and win prizes.
Mottla says Tori was deliberately designed as a woman, a strategic decision aimed at the station’s largely male audience.
“We have all guys on the air, and I thought it would be a good balance to have a woman,” he said. “You can't market an image of a guy to guys as you can a woman. Guys will respond to a visual of a woman in a more positive way than they will a man — it's a sexist thing. We get to put a good-looking, tatted-up rock girl on our socials, and I think that's good for the majority male audience that we have.”
While she no longer sounds as “wonky” and “robotic” as she did in her first year, AI DJ Tori remains far from perfect. She still mispronounces band names, still sounds distinctly synthetic and is nowhere near capable of filling in for a human host — which is precisely how Mottla prefers it.
“She's never going to be a human, and, at least on this station, she's not going to replace humans,” he said. “We like when she makes mistakes, because it highlights the fact she's an AI.”
