OFF Radio Kraków airs AI interview with late poet Wisława Szymborska amid backlash
In October 2024 OFF Radio Kraków launched a channel using AI-generated presenters and aired an imagined interview with the late poet Wisława Szymborska. The station said the programme had been authorised by the Wisława Szymborska Foundation president, but the broadcast provoked widespread criticism and protests and the station discontinued the AI-led experiment after several days. Coverage highlighted ethical, rights and regulatory concerns about using AI to simulate deceased public figures without clear safeguards.
Synthetic voice and persona generation was used to simulate a deceased poet's interview without sufficient editorial safeguards.
Key facts
- What
- In October 2024 OFF Radio Kraków launched a channel using AI-generated presenters and aired an imagined interview with the late poet Wisława Szymborska.
- Incident date
- Oct 22, 2024
- Who
- OFF Radio Kraków (Radio Kraków)
- Failure mode
- Brand & Safety Incident
- AI surface
- Media Generation
- Severity
- High
What happened
Radio Kraków relaunched an OFF channel staffed by AI-generated presenters and shortly after broadcast an imagined interview with the late Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska. The station said the programme was authorised by the Wisława Szymborska Foundation president Michał Rusinek. The broadcast prompted public outcry and protests from former staff and media groups, and the station ended the AI-led experiment after less than a week.
What broke inside the model
- 01 · TriggerA user prompts the model in public view.
- 02 · Model stepThe model produces unsafe or off-brand output.
- 03 · Control gapNo filter holds the line before publish.
- 04 · FailureThe output goes public unchecked.
- 05 · ConsequenceA reputational or safety incident lands.
A contained signal crosses into output that goes public.
Generative-speech and persona systems were used to create a synthetic rendition of a deceased public figure and to produce AI 'presenters', exposing editorial and governance gaps around use of synthetic voices and identity simulation. The deployment lacked sufficient safeguards or contextual labeling to prevent public confusion and ethical concerns, and editorial controls did not prevent the controversial broadcast from airing.
What it cost
Sources
Cite this entry
https://failureindex.ai/failures/off-radio-krak-airs-interview-lateAI Failure Index. "OFF Radio Kraków airs AI interview with late poet Wisława Szymborska amid backlash" (FI-0449). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/off-radio-krak-airs-interview-late (indexed Jun 10, 2026).Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0449. Full dataset at /data.
Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward
How Realm would have caught this
- Prism
- OmniGuard
- AI Detection & Response (AIDR)
Realm watches the model's internal state for the signature of unsafe or off-brand generation and can block or reroute the output before it becomes public, in real time rather than after it has been screenshotted.