The PR consultant and former journalist Sakari Pitkänen was for a long time the editor-in-chief of the now defunct free newspaper Metro.
Together with colleague Martin Carlsson, he has now started RadioX - a local daily news podcast where an AI voice acts as host.
So far, RadioX makes two podcasts - one covers the district Hammarby sjöstad in Stockholm, the other the town Bjäre in Skåne.
- It is local journalism for smaller geographical areas.
It can be anything from a new food truck on your street to politicians deciding something that concerns your local life, where you live, says Sakari Pitkänen to Kulturnyheterna.
Hear the AI voices in the clip.
Super local
Local journalism is not very local in Sweden anymore, says Sakari Pitkänen.
Local newspapers cover increasingly larger areas, as it is more profitable.
- The audience, on the other hand, is more interested in what is happening really close, he says.
RadioX publishes news podcasts every morning Monday-Friday.
The broadcasts are short, two to three minutes, with local news, traffic information and weather.
Right now it's summer break, but in August they start again.
Robot journalism
After starting up in Hammarby sjöstad and Bjäre, Sakari Pitkänen hopes to be able to spread the concept to other parts of Sweden.
- I think we have shown that it is only possible to do radio with AI presenters.
And when it comes to regular events where there is good data, such as traffic and weather, it is advantageous to do robot journalism, he says.
By robot journalism is meant to use AI to seek out and formulate what is to be published, without the help of a human reporter.
- It is better for a robot to say that the tram is delayed than for us to have a person who finds out about this, reads it and sends it, says Sakari Pitkänen.