Rapid Response: Will.i.am is using AI to re-make radio

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Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. Because I love radio so much, I want to innovate.

We help out the realm. That changed my life. Radio dot FYI is The dawn of intelligent media. An year and a half, two years.

Radio dot FYI will be an every single car's dash. No small aspirations for this, huh? Yo, bro. Aspirations.

You can't spell ambition. without AM and you can't spell Will I am without AM. That's Will I Am the musician, investor, and entrepreneur. Will's company FYI recently launched an app called Radio.fyi, offering curated radio stations with AI hosts that users can interact with in real time. I wanted to talk to Will to understand how radio.fyi plays into his wider view on the future of AI and how AI might impact music, media, and commerce.

Will's getting his NBA at Harvard right now, and so he shares why the lesson that stuck with him most. Is a case study about spinning lollipops. He also talks about how a musician's early influences are like AI training data, how AI developers are like rappers, what's behind his partnership with Mercedes, and so much more. In classic will fashion, I never knew quite where he was going next. Let's get into it. I'm Bob Safian, and this

Is rapid response. I'm Bob Safi and I'm here with uh Will I Am. Will, thanks for joining us. Oh man, it's great to be here. You've been on Masters of Scale as a guest.

as a guest host, sharing lessons from your career for for This show I wanna ask you about. right now about how you're managing in this crazy world of ours. You've been on tour with the black eyed peas, but at the same time You recently launched radio. FYI to reimagine radio as a media experience.

Can you explain what radio dot FYI is? Radio dot FYI is Yeah, text to station. S Right. So

We know what text to action is. And in this case The action In our architecture is The format of radio

So I could Ask any question. About Any Topic that is presented to me.

Um where You know, this AI host. Is speaking over this mood music, then throwing to song. Then grabbing information as as information is unfolding in the internet and then presenting it back. in the form of radio and then throwing to song

And then asking you along the way if I have any questions On anything that it's presented. And then it could Then answer those questions. It's part AI assistant and part

listening experience. It's like this blend of Information and entertainment. Is what we call um the dawn of intelligent media. Where the media itself is Interactive, engageable media.

Rather than a passive lean back experience. It's a lean in, dig in, dive deep. media experience. Where does the information come from? that that you're getting. I know you've said you have a team of journalists, but like are you citing news sources?

I'm I'm pull up politics right quick. If you go to the politics station on uh radio dot FYI It's Doing it's Radio thing.

From our Curation. So we curated these stories. Right. The same way that a radio station would decide what They're gonna

Tell you about. Or right about. Right. So we have our We have our

Who, what, where and why? And then we have the essential information. And the this is the essential information has come from Yeah. The embargo feeds that

These entities have pushed To journalists. To write about. So we receive the same type of feeds that everyone receives their stuff from. And then our journalists write about those.

But we we write about them to be presented. Right we look at this. our station like a new type of magazine. But instead of reading it and then having questions about it. We Then allow for a di a deeper dive.

And promote engagement to ask questions about what was presented. So I so I don't have to just read it. It I can have a conversation with The DJ, I guess. A bad percentage of things that are there, right? Exactly.

What we've been able to do with our architecture is allow for human like banter if you were to be on a radio station or and a call and you could call in and talk to a person You're able to talk to the information itself. And that's pretty profound to be able to say like, yo

What do you mean you're able to talk to the information? That sounds freaking ludicrous. Mm-hmm. Bro. You could talk to the information, bro. You could literally have a conversation with silicone.

And freaking lithium now because of our because of the technology that we live it in. And and now there's also there is music on there, right? Like are you linked into like Apple Music or Spotify? Like how do you how do you get or pay for the music rights? Like it does do what like a radio station does again? Like is that the model? I mean the the app is free to download. I just want to say that to everyone, but yeah. So this is the project that the politics is.

Playing from, right? And so if I go to the folder, these Forty songs like top forty. There's the forty songs that it's playing from. It's human curated. So you've got your library that you have curated from other places. And and you're paying for the rights to that as opposed to through a

Separate streaming service. Yeah, we're not a streaming service like Spotify. Yeah. It's it's like radio like radio. Right.

You can't like um Fast forward or rewind or M most you could do is pause. It's not it's not streaming, it's not uh a la carte, it's not on demand like Like

Radio. And because I love radio so much. I wanna innovate and help out. The the The realm.

That Change my life. And what changed my life Is radio. What changed Lana Richie's life?

Is radio. What change Stevie Wonder's life. is radio. And so innovating around a space that tr urgently needs innovation.

You know, for our community of music. The artist that make it. Radio, radio Radio. There a moment where you like

This this passion you had for radio and this experience, you were like, I gotta build something around this. I have a radio show on Sirius XM. I didn't want to have my own radio show. Someone was like, Yo, Will, you'll be great doing a blog or or your own radio show. I'm like The only way I'll have a radio show if my co host was an AI. I mean, I think that'll be dope. I've been doing TV in the UK for twelve years.

There's one thing I cannot do. And that is be available for anybody to ask me Questions. Unlimitedly.

If somebody had questions on what I said on TV After broadcast. Maybe I could talk to like a couple of people on Twitter. Or Instagram stories. And that's it. I'm a tap out. I'm be like, yo, I I need to go get something to eat.

We had a ceiling on engagement. But if I had a co host They could do it all day, all night, a million people at once. And so when I started doing my show on Serious XM, I was like, yo. Every person that has a radio show or a podcast

needs to be able to have a co host like me. I need to build that. If I can make a system That a that automates Going from segment to song.

Yeah. That'd be freaking awesome. This means I could create a whole new type of Add unit wait a second What is a commercial

When I can ask the commercial more about the pro wait a second. This means the product could speak for itself. Get out of here. We gotta do this fast. We gotta build this

Oh my gosh, this is gonna change everything. This is a whole different way to engage. This is a whole different Way to have. Commerce.

Because a commercial is not a commercial. If I could just buy it from the radio. GET OTA HERE! Was the last time radio actually saw Wait a second. I know that Mercedes is one of your investors. Like I was wondering whether you know the idea that like FYI radio would be installed in the dash of every Mercedes. Yo, wait a second.

Wait a second. Were you not on our freaking Mercedes. Call this morning? Wait a second. In a year and a half, two years.

Radio dot FYI will be And every single car is dash. As the Preferred radio experience. No small aspirations for this, huh?

Yo, bro. Aspirations. You can't spell Ambition. without AM and you can't spell Will I am without AM.

Yeah. I'm ambitious, bro. There's if you're gonna dream it. Make it real. If you're going to ID eight.

You want to like materialize. And you need to find partners. That help you with your ideation and materialization to Deployment. This has been a

Three year journey? Working with Mercedes. Finding ways to You know, to aim my brain at uh You know, identifying issues like yo, yo, let's fix this.

I can make A system to be able to play music. That's based on the driver's Driving. And and they they can recompose, reimagine, reconfigure songs just driving.

So that product's called Sound Drive that will be launched in September. Really excited. You were on Jimmy Fallon recently and you talked a little bit about the MBA you're getting from Harvard. Your first degree, no high school, no undergrad. But you Clearly you've had plenty of education in your life and you're hardly a novice in the world of business. Like Are there any

surprises that you've learned at Harvard? Like has it changed how you run your company or how you think about your career? Yeah. The things that are w the valuable lessons from Harvard Are the case studies from people's failures? That's valuable lessons because for as a entrepreneur.

You know that You know, really good entrepreneurs, they bounce back. And they're not afraid of Failing and falling. 'Cause the whole premise of entrepreneurship is learning and applying.

And if you could learn from someone else's trials and errors And then apply that. You know? It's like uh How planes are able to detect turbulence.

Uh part of the reason why they know turbulence is coming is because there's a plane that went before them. Is there a specific case that like that that hit home for you? So not not a failure. There's this one case study that we learned About this guy that created Uh you know that spin pop?

Uh huh. Like It's like a spin pop. This dumbass lollipop that spun.

Anyways, this dude like sold that shit, right? And and and the architecture was something that went around this way. And then he sold that architecture, I think, to Hasbro or Mattel. And then he took the tech the architecture, instead of it spinning, he had to go like Uh up and down.

And then he sold that to freaking Colgate. For a toothbrush. And he was like, Okay, then he took that same architecture and instead of going up and down and spinning He had to go left and right. And then he sold that sh to Tyde.

For like washing clothes. I'm like yo, this cat And slanged it three different times.

Because a lot of times when it comes to innovation And creative people. They think that every idea has to be a brand new idea rather than just reimagining their last idea. Their arrogance and their ego tells them that, you know Yo, I got a I got a

I gotta really take it to the next level. When really taking it to the next level is reimagining the last level. Will is an unconventional thinker, connecting dots that others don't see, but he's also practical. That impact and change don't have to come from the next new thing. You can redefine an old thing too. Even radio. After the break, we go deeper into old and new as Will compares James Brown's music to AI training data, AI developers to rappers, and his own business team to the Golden State Warriors.

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Creative planning where wealth works together. learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future.

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Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show. Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the rapid response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. For the break, Will I Am shared the inspiration behind his new radio.fyi app, which he describes as the dawn of intelligent media. Now we talk about the legal battles facing AI music generator Udio, which he uses radio.fyi to explain.

Plus how Prince and Michael Jackson relied on training data just like AI does, why everything in life is math. And why AI can't write music like Will yet. Let's jump back in. You were the first one to tell me about UDO, which is this Amazing AI based music generator that you're investing. I mean, you prompt it, it creates an original song for you.

It's amazing. Now the record labels are suing it for infringement. Like How do you think about squaring this sort of awesome tech for creative work? And the kind of creative work that underlies it, that trains it. How do you think about those things fitting?

Hold on a second. Ha ha. At some point in time in the past. Did the record company sue Spotify? Yes, record companies have had legal disputes with Spotify in the past.

One key early legal tussle was with the National Music Publishers Association, an MPA in the US. Cool, thanks. Yeah. I mean that's one of that's one one that's one of our personas. So So

Say for example. Spotify had no users. The record companies wouldn't have sued them. So the reason why they sue them is because there's like growth. The reason why they sued Udio is because Udio has growth.

So it's a good thing. Because that means they're gonna come to some type of agreement Faster. And artists And how are they trained their stuff on

It's gonna be resolved. It's But we're we're in tricky grounds now. For example, let's say, for example, Prince was alive. And you went to Prince and said, Hey Prince, who's your inspiration?

Prince is gonna obviously tell you James Brown, Sliding Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix. If you would ask Michael Jackson, hey Mike, who's your inspiration? Michael Jackson's gonna say James Brown, Fred Astere, Sammy Davis Junior, and Gene Kelly. They both what they both have in common is James Brown. And it's clear that James Brown is their

Take inspiration, you could see it. So in this case from human to human We call it inspiration. Machines call it.

Data set. And training. What you trained on. If you would ask like An artist.

Like yo. Who's your inspiration? It's the same shit. Because it's this we we have a neural network and that neural network was based off of our neural network. So now we're in a touchy grounds ground here. Because last time I checked

Prince did not give James Brown, royalties. Because he was inspired by him. Like he his pathways was a part of his Data set.

So that's where it gets blurry. Mm-hmm. Where we are now. Do you use Uniel like Is there something you use it for in your

Song running in your process? No, because Udio doesn't do black IPs right. Mm-hmm.

Well, you should be able to help him with that. Yeah, but I don't want to help him with that. Yeah. The way I write music

The AI doesn't write music like that. That's what I mean by that. Mm. It doesn't do

Fusion. Right. It can do like yo give me like Trap. It does I've awesome.

It can do like jazz great. But if the moment I'm like, yo, give me Give me Samba. With a little bit of blues and a little bit of rock and a little bit of calypso.

It's not gonna do that. Right. Like M m more more subtle flavors or Creating new flavors it it

Just doesn't do that as well. Yet. Th does that what people like most misunderstand about AI, the yet, like that you know, like right now it can't do black eyed peas, but maybe it will be able to?

This is the worst it's ever gonna be. Because it just gets better from here. And that's being optimistic in every sense of the way. Ethically

Morally. Business. Legally. You know, compensation wise. This is the worst it's ever gonna be.

Being optimistic. Let's be optimistic that The greed. Yeah. We don't leave.

That the powers that be don't lead with greed. This is the Worst it's ever going to be. That sentence it. Let's be optimistic that the powers that be don't lead with greed.

This is the worst it's ever gonna be. It's it's uh Always awesome to talk to you, Will. You're straddling these sort of Multiple careers in music, in tech, you do T V. You know.

And I wonder how you manage all that, whether Whether Harvard gave you any hints on that, like Jack Dorsey was CEO of Twitter and Square at the same time, and he had designated days for each company, right? Like Ha how do you prioritize all the different things that are part of your world.

It's really On the teams you built. The premise is to build A warriors type of team. You want uh Stephen Curry.

But then you need Draymond Green, you need the squad. So the same is here for FYI. Wh my squad allows me to To go out and hunt and find other Partners that compliment.

the things that we're trying to do. When I'm Working with Mercedes. Mercedes needs to know like You know what? Well we thought was just a musician, but he's more than that.

He's doing Is is great in our in our workshops. He always has good ideas. And then when I'm there I I can't o I can't flo them with my idea faucet.

Had to be super strategic and like Aim it. idea is you could drown somebody with with And then and then and then and then I

You don't wanna and then people. Mm. So you have to go in there with Be super like Focus with what and then is the one you want to

Leave them with. I I was gonna say like I worked for somebody once who had like a ton of ideas and I felt like my job was like to say, No, no, no, no, no, yes, that one. Like, do you do that for yourself? Where you're going through your own ideas, you're writing them down, you're Putting down then you're saying

No, no, no. Oh yes, that's the one to sort strategically push. Or or do you use other people around you to help you Do that. You have to have a A different sounding board.

And I have a great sounding board. Outside of FYI. Because if it's FYI a lot of times like you could get Lost on your own sauce. And and what's grounding y you need a outside.

Team. Of trusted Truth. Tellers. And you've got to be able to do it.

Bullshit, right? Yeah, like I don't know about that one, bro. Yeah, yeah, okay. Why though? Why why don't you know about that one? Well, here's why. All right, okay, okay, okay, okay. You bring up some good points.

And then you take those points, you go to a different person. Thank you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um What do you think about this? Do you think this point is val Oh yeah, now that you say that, yep.

Okay, cool. Seven other people, nine other people. And then after you corral that You go back to your team. Be like, hey, I got this idea.

Here's the flags that are circling around it. Do we want to implement it? Mm. So because if you just come with an idea Then you're just a dictator.

Mm. If your idea's not Grounded in like Plausibility. Um networkability.

Um And you can do all that even before somebody then asked like Who's your target audience? Like Okay, bro. Somebody got in your w your head, and now you think you're supposed to ask that for everybody. For example. Let's say this is nineteen

Eighty. And somebody got A turn table and went Juga, pue it, puka it, chik. Was that the target audience for somebody to get a turntable and scratch on it?

If if somebody was like you I wanna make a needle that doesn't jump. Somebody would be like, Yo, who's your target audience? Turns out there's a few kids over there in In uh New York that are Scratching on the record.

Thank you. Why why are we gonna make that? There's like ten people doing that shit. Fact is, someone did that. And the target audience was a small group of people. But if if they were just basing it off a target audience

From that perspective, it's like what does that target audience Do who else do they impact? So it sometimes your target audience is a very small group of people that impact a a a larger group of people. But Let's ignore the larger group of people just to focus on these impactors.

That sound really small and pointless at the at at the time. But trust me, I've done my research and the flaggers. have flagged the theory to be Optimal. And this is humans, not AI.

Mm. We have to try to ask humans this because the AI is only aggregating known stuff. And we have this other method of knowing that's emotional, that's that's connected to like reason and like it's connected to Like just human experience.

And AI Hopefully. Well never ever have that type of insight. You go to people for your business ideas. Do you do you do that for your creative ideas, for your your songwriting, your music too?

No, usually the ideas come from I I I D eight. It's a gift. And

And sometimes a curse. The the the The ideation. The curse is They're all my children.

Mm. And and which one do you love the most? Because if you're making an album you gotta pick one. Like you're not doing every idea on the album. Oh no no I'll record every idea.

And just because it's not ready for today, that doesn't mean that it's not gonna be ready tomorrow. There's a song that we recorded with I wrote and recorded with Shakira called Girl Like Me in two thousand eight. That song gonna come out to twenty twenty. One. So not every Thing is ready and made for right now.

I aim to love and breathe life into every idea. And so Some people can say like you know I chase shiny objects. Yeah.

I do. I do. But I also know how to delegate And uh And have other folks

Sit on the egg. And and and hatch it. You know, yeah, I I can make music by myself, but That's like Tickling myself out I ain't gonna laugh.

You know what I'm saying? Like anybody that tickles herself that laughs like I don't know, maybe they kinda like weird. Anyhow. My point of what I'm trying to get at is

I like collaborating. And making me and collaborating is team building. Whether you're team building to make music or you're team building to make s uh, you know, experiences and technologies like Radio.fy. It's still the same type of like

We're missing somebody. What do you mean, who we're missing? So I know how to like identify what's missing and hunt and do my rolodex of all the people that I've ever networked with and met in my path. I'm able to either find developers Whether they're developers in Bangalore or Chennai. Or Israel or Ukraine.

You know a lot of developers. Yeah, developers is like it's in the nineteen eighties. I'm trying to find rappers. Like if if if if you're not going to be a little bit If AI is hip hop, you gotta find the the lyricists. And so You know, a developer, a rapper.

They're dealing with large language. Turns out when they used to say music was math. Who do you It it is math. Like, god damn it. If I only would have known that it truly is math and algorithms could really Compose. Wow.

They were. And right. Music is fing math. Everything's math. Damn everything. Everything.

Everything is math. With just a little bit of heart. Just a little bit of heart though, no? Heart math too. If you were to ask d what what is the trajectory of what type of organs are gonna be printing twenty years from now. They're gonna be printing hearts.

And that's math. Are you you mean y did you say? Are you talking about heart like physical heart or like emotional? Emotional Emotional Hard. Boy me. I kne I I'm talking about like you know Yeah, I know, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yes, right. You're right. Emotional, spiritual. Yeah, you know, a little bit of it. Well, just a little bit to keep us to keep us on the right path, man. You know? Yeah.

So So Salt. Yeah. I'll give you that. Ha ha. I'll give you that. Yeah.

Well, well this is this has been great. Thanks so much for doing it. Thanks, Bob, appreciate it. Talking with Will is a blast. One of my favorite moments was listening to him compose that mini rap on AI organically. Let's be optimistic that the powers that be don't lead with greed. This is the worst it's ever gonna be. Optimism is at the core of so much that Will preaches. We need to stay focused on what might be possible to bring about progress, whether we're talking about radio, commerce, or the human heart.

as a song and video Will produced back in 2008 said. Yes we can. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.

Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies. Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Calyubi. And on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more.

As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Rapid response is a Wait What original.

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