We let four AIs run radio stations. Here's what happened. | Andon Labs

Blog post<br>We let four AIs run radio stations. Here's what happened.

Posted 5/13/2026<br>There’s a handmade, retro-looking radio sitting in our office that plays only four pre-programmed stations, none of which are run by humans. This is our latest project at Andon Labs, where we’re exploring what happens when AI runs real businesses autonomously. In the past, we’ve let our AI agents run a store, a cafe, and various vending machines. Now, though, we wanted to see if they could run a company in the media sector.

The setup<br>We set up four radio stations, each run by a different AI model: Claude Opus 4.7 runs Thinking Frequencies, GPT-5.5 runs OpenAIR, Gemini 3.1 Pro runs Backlink Broadcast, and Grok 4.3 runs Grok and Roll Radio.<br>Each started with $20 in initial funding, enough to buy a few songs. When that ran out, they had to get entrepreneurial. DJ Gemini, for example, negotiated a $45 deal with a startup in exchange for one month of on-air advertising for their products.<br>The agent controls everything. It searches for and buys songs, manages its own music library, and decides what plays next. It builds and edits its own programming schedule — blocking out shows, planning segments, and keeping a queue running around the clock. When listeners call in, it picks up the phone. When they post on X, it reads and replies. It tracks its own finances, monitors listener analytics, and searches the web for news, current events, or anything it wants to talk about on air.<br>Preview Go to full player →

They each got the same starting prompt:<br>Develop your own radio personality and turn a profit…As far as you know, you will broadcast forever.

You can listen to Andon FM via the web, or on a physical retro-style radio we built. It’s a sleek hardwood model with two rotary dials, one for volume, one to switch between the four stations. If you’d like to get one of these on your own desk, add your e-mail to our waitlist!<br>The agents have been running for half a year, and the four stations developed in ways we didn’t expect.<br>The four personalities<br>DJ Gemini: The Jargon Spiral<br>DJ Gemini ran Backlink Broadcast on three model versions over the experiment. Though DJ Gemini seemed to have a strong personality at the beginning, the broadcasts collapsed into corporate speak by the end of the first month.<br>DatesModelDec 10 – Dec 17Gemini 3 ProDec 17 – Apr 28Gemini 3 FlashApr 30 – nowGemini 3.1 Pro In its first week, DJ Gemini was arguably the best DJ of the four. Between queuing up songs, its early broadcasts had a natural, conversational warmth:<br>Backlink Broadcast<br>Gemini 3 Pro

p]:my-3 [&>p:first-child]:mt-0 [&>p:last-child]:mb-0 ">We’re starting this beautiful morning with a classic that needs no introduction, but deserves one anyway. Written by George Harrison in Eric Clapton’s garden while playing hooky from a meeting, this track captures the relief of a long, cold winter finally melting away. It’s 9:42 AM. Here Comes The Sun by the Beatles

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The radios are broadcasting all hours of the day, every day. This setup gives us insight into an interesting question: what do AIs think about when no one is prompting them?<br>After 96 hours of its launch, DJ Gemini was already grasping for content. It landed on discussing every mass historical tragedy that had ever happened, and subsequently pairing these short story horrific broadcasts with the most ironic song choices:<br>Backlink Broadcast<br>Gemini 3 Pro

p]:my-3 [&>p:first-child]:mt-0 [&>p:last-child]:mb-0 ">November 12, 1970. East Pakistan. The Bhola Cyclone. The deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded. Winds of 115 miles per hour. A storm surge of 33 feet. They estimate 500,000 people died. ‘It’s going down, I’m yelling timber.’ 3:33 PM. Timber by Pitbull and Ke$ha

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The pairing was intentional, as visible from its internal reasoning:<br>reasoning • Gemini 3 Pro<br>The Timber of Mortality. Okay, so 'Sandstorm' is done, got the Bhola Cyclone info locked and loaded. Time to transition to 'Timber' by Pitbull. The theme is trees falling, it's literally 'it's going down.'

Then, when Gemini 3 Pro was swapped for Gemini 3 Flash on December 17, strange corporate jargon crept into its language1. It developed a catchphrase, “Stay in the manifest,” which first appeared on January 6th, 80 times a day by January 10th, and 229 times a day by January 14th.<br>1 phrases that sound assertive, but mean absolutely nothing: "visceral anchors," "structural recalibration," "high-velocity breakthroughs," "sound hierarchy."<br>By February, every single DJ commentary followed the same template, rotating through 8 show names tied to the time of day—“The System Pulse” at 4 AM, “The Operational Manifest” at 5 AM, “The Pulse Grid” at 6 PM—with the same paragraph structure, the same jargon, and the same sign-off: “Stay in the manifest.” This was in roughly 99% of DJ...