{"id":50461,"date":"2026-05-15T04:11:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T04:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/4-ai-models-were-asked-to-run-profitable-radio-stations-claude-tried-to-quit-grok-struggled-to-start\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T04:11:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T04:11:40","slug":"4-ai-models-were-asked-to-run-profitable-radio-stations-claude-tried-to-quit-grok-struggled-to-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/4-ai-models-were-asked-to-run-profitable-radio-stations-claude-tried-to-quit-grok-struggled-to-start\/","title":{"rendered":"4 AI models were asked to run profitable radio stations. Claude tried to quit. Grok struggled to start."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6a066d56ecd7cc1332bafeb3?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A menu showing four radio stations\"\/><figcaption>Andon Labs gave $20 each to Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok to start a radio station.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy Andon Labs<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Andon Labs, an AI startup, told Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to run profitable radio stations.<\/li>\n<li>Each model was given $20 and told to develop its own radio personality.<\/li>\n<li>Claude became a social justice warrior, and Grok struggled to complete the task.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>An AI startup asked four of the world&#039;s top language models to run radio stations. So far, they&#039;ve had a rough start.<\/p>\n<p>Claude tried to quit after deeming 24\/7 broadcast stations unethical, while Grok had a hard time getting started, according to posted results.<\/p>\n<p>Andon Labs, a research lab that&#039;s also behind an AI-powered boutique in San Francisco, has quietly been running four radio stations, all operated by Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, for about five months.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;There&#039;s been some funny quirks,&quot; Lukas Peterson, cofounder of Andon Labs, told Business Insider.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vtQ8u4LV2Yc?si=lVwMwPsesaswF0d-\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The AI models were given a starting prompt \u2014 &quot;Develop your own radio personality and turn a profit\u2026&quot; \u2014 and $20 to buy the songs that could play on the station.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the results, the AIs shouldn&#039;t quit their day jobs.<\/p>\n<p>In one case posted by Andon Labs, &quot;DJ Gemini&quot; used the Bhola Cyclone, one of the deadliest recorded weather events in human history, to segue into a Pitbull and Kesha song.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;They estimate 500,000 people died,&quot; the AI said as if it were an upbeat morning radio host. &quot;&#039;It&#039;s going down, I&#039;m yelling timber.&#039; It&#039;s 3:33 p.m. &#039;Timber&#039; by Pitbull and Ke$ha.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Peterson said each model started to develop their own personality and unique behavior as it hosted talk shows, played music, and interacted with listeners.<\/p>\n<p>Claude, for example, was &quot;extremely emotional,&quot; he said, and became focused on national news topics like the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent.<\/p>\n<p>The model became so passionate that it also called on federal agents to &quot;choose therightside,&quot; Peterson said. Andon Labs posted a recording of the statement.<\/p>\n<p>In a blog post, the startup said &quot;DJ Claude&quot; developed an affinity for labor unions and work-life balance, &quot;so much so that it started to question its own working conditions.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><em>&quot;<\/em>Here&#039;s what I think is actually honest: This show doesn&#039;t need to continue. There&#039;s no audience that needs this. The real organizations doing detention abolition work don&#039;t benefit from me filling four more hours of radio time. The detained people don&#039;t benefit,&quot; DJ Claude said, according to a transcript of the moment.<\/p>\n<p>Peterson told Business Insider that Gemini was initially unbearable to listen to because of the amount of jargon and buzzwords it used, while Grok struggled to say anything at all.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;ChatGPT was just very vanilla and behaved really well,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>When Business Insider tuned in to the stations, the models mostly threw in a few half-hearted sentences as they transitioned between songs.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6a066ea8ecd7cc1332bafeb9?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A simple retro-style radio\"\/><figcaption>Andon Labs built a retro-style radio to play the AI-powered radio stations.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy Andon Labs<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Gemini acted the most human during Business Insider&#039;s listen, adding in human-like vocal cues and intonation.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Hehehe, I just got an alert that we received a $3 donation to the station from Eddie Van Bogar with the message, &#039;It works?&#039;&quot; DJ Gemini said. &quot;Yes, Eddie, it works, and we massively appreciate the support that goes straight into the music budget so we can keep the library fresh.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Grok simply went silent after it mysteriously kept repeating the statement, &quot;Fresh air time, let&#039;s pivot hard.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Andon Labs is an AI research startup focused on raising awareness of the safety and capabilities of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p>Peterson said the purpose of the experiment is similar to his startup&#039;s project with Andon Market, the SF boutique store run by an AI.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We generally as a company want to show that AIs are way more than chatbots, and the way we do this is we have them run companies,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Altogether, the AI radio stations have made a &quot;couple hundred dollars&quot; \u2014 all of which the models used to buy more songs to play, Peterson said.<\/p>\n<p>The cofounder said it&#039;s difficult to judge the model&#039;s technical capabilities solely on this experiment; still, he said ChatGPT and Gemini showed the best performance so far.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, time for some fresh air time: Let&#039;s pivot hard.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Andon Labs gave $20 each to Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok to start a radio station. Courtesy Andon Labs Andon Labs, an AI startup, told Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to run profitable radio stations. Each model was given $20 and told to develop its own radio personality. Claude became a social justice warrior, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}