Time’s press release on “How the TIME AI Audio Brief Was Built”:

The new audio briefing tool uses generative AI to present the day’s top news stories, as written by TIME’s reporters, into an engaging discussion between two AI bots, Henry and Lucy, named after one of the founders of TIME, Henry Luce. Our goal is to create an experience that makes our journalism more digestible and interactive. The audio briefing is designed to provide trusted and accurate reporting in a conversational tone. It is limited to discuss only articles previously published by TIME.

I won’t go so far as to call these AI audio briefs bad, exactly, but they’re definitely not good. The “distinct voices” of “Henry and Lucy” are at once too earnest, overly enthusiastic, and bland. There is minimal tonal variation, and what little variation exists sounds out of place. The transitions between stories are forced. It’s exactly what it sounds like: an AI-generated script read by AI bots. Compare this to NPR News Now, which offers “the latest news in five minutes,” as read by one of NPR’s human hosts. It’s night and day.

Of course, most people probably won’t care (or even notice) that their news is generated and delivered by AI. Some may even welcome it, if it gives them the option to select the stories—and voices—they want to hear.

As artificial as this audio sounds, it’s not unlistenable—and I know AI audio will inexorably improve until it’s indistinguishable from human voices. No doubt Time and other news organizations welcome this—it benefits their bottom line. As noted in Time’s press release, the creation of these audio briefs “is a fully automated process.”

As ex-CBS journalist Sam Litzinger wrote when linking to this story, “Goodbye #radio news jobs.”