An AI-generated speculative radio project
Exhibited as part of the “Intelligent Museum” project in the Biomedia exhibition at ZKM

Botcasts – a portmanteau of “bot” and “podcast” – is an experimental radio format that transforms real-world headlines into AI-generated speculative fiction. Drawing from current news articles spanning politics, culture, and entertainment, the system creates fictional audio broadcasts that extend or distort reality, exploring the unsettling boundary between information, disinformation, and imagination.

Concept

In an era where so-called “alternative facts” have become tools of disinformation and political manipulation, and where over half of global internet traffic is generated by bots, Botcasts investigates the disruptive and infiltrative nature of automated media. The work poses questions about the future of journalism, authorship, and trust in an increasingly synthetic information ecosystem.

By converting legitimate news into speculative narratives, Botcasts simulates a media landscape where fiction and fact become indistinguishable—highlighting how easily perception can be shaped by algorithms.

Technical Write-Up

• News Processing: Articles are automatically scraped and summarized using the newspaper3k Python a.

• Text Generation: The summaries are then used as prompts for the GPT-Neo model, which generates fictional news stories.

• Model Choice: GPT-Neo was selected for its open-source nature and its ability to produce coherent, contextually rich output. Other models like aitextgen were tested but produced less satisfactory results.

The generated content is formatted as a podcast-style radio broadcast, simulating the tone and cadence of traditional news media while presenting entirely fabricated narratives.