LOS ANGELES — A new type of radio station bubbled up in Los Angeles this week, with songs, bands and even the DJ generated by artificial intelligence.

"The Fizz," as it’s called, is broadcasting on 106.3 FM for the month of June as part of an elaborate relaunch campaign for the ‘80s soda brand Slice.

What You Need To Know

  • A new type of radio station bubbled up in Los Angeles this week, with songs, bands and even the DJ generated by artificial intelligence

  • The Fizz, as it’s called, is broadcasting on 106.3 FM for the month of June as part of an elaborate relaunch campaign for the ‘80s soda brand, Slice

  • Driving through mid city, where the signal is strongest, people who tune in either by choice or by accident will hear soda-themed songs with titles like “Pop the Top,” “Fizzical Attraction” and “Lipstick Stain on my Slice” as part of a “pop 40 countdown"

  • Billed as LA’s home for pop hits that didn’t exist until now, the station airs jingles, back announcements from a DJ named Bev and back stories for nonexistent bands — all of it created with Google’s AI programs

Driving through Mid-City, where the signal is strongest, people who tune in either by choice or by accident will hear soda-themed songs with titles such as “Pop the Top,” “Fizzical Attraction” and “Lipstick Stain on my Slice” as part of a “pop 40 countdown.” Billed as LA’s home for "pop hits that didn’t exist until now," the station is airing jingles, back announcements from a DJ named Bev and back stories for nonexistent bands — all of it created with Google’s AI programs.

“Partnering with Google let our team really take their creative vision to a whole new form of expression that would not have been possible to deliver in the time and scale we needed without these tools,” Katy Hornaday, CEO of ad agency and campaign creator BarkleyOKRP, said in a statement.

Formatted like a traditional top-40 radio station, casual listeners might not realize they are hearing entirely AI-generated programming until the lyrics register. Whether it’s the fictional boy band Thirst Factory or the Madness-style ska act the 84s, all of the songs highlight — and even name-check — Slice and its rebirth as a good-for-you soda with pre-, pro- and post-biotics.

To create the station and its three-hour loop of songs and stories that plays 24/7, Slice worked with a real DJ and a handful of certified musicologists to create what the brand’s chief marketing officer called a “delightfully generic” catalog of music designed to appeal to Gen Xers who grew up listening to top-40 radio in the ‘80s and ‘90s and Gen Zers and millennials who are nostalgic for the era.

“We know we have an authentic role to play when it comes to bringing nostalgia into the modern world in a way that fits with people’s lifestyles, because we were there,” said Nicole Portwood, chief marketing officer at Suja Life, the parent company of Slice.

Slice soda first came on the market in 1984, when the dominant fashion trend was neon, the top-grossing film was "Ghostbusters" and Prince’s “When Doves Cry” topped the radio charts.

“When I think of that song, it takes me back to this era of freedom in the summer and listening to music with the windows rolled down,” Portwood said. “That feeling of simple joy is something we really wanted to try to capture.”

Portwood said Slice selected LA for the pop-up radio station in part because people spend so much time in their cars.

“When you think of the glory days of summer, riding up and down the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down on your convertible, LA is a really iconic place for that,” she said.

The station is broadcast with a 4-watt translator and reaches the Koreatown and mid-Wilshire areas of Los Angeles. Slice leased the 106.3 FM frequency from the license holder, Vietnam California Radio, also known as KALI-FM, in Fountain Valley, California.

The Federal Communications Commission told Spectrum News the type of agreement Slice has with the license holder for the frequency is called a local marketing, or time brokerage, agreement, in which an FM license holder retains control of the station but a programmer supplies some or all of a station’s content.

Driving toward LA from VNCR headquarters in an Orange County strip mall, where the station is sandwiched between a nail salon and dentist office, the Vietnamese language station is strong and clear until downtown LA, when AI-generated DJ Bev begins to dominate with slick and punny back announcements that hint she isn't real.

The Fizz will eventually have a call-in number manned by a human being for listeners to dial in and win free products and prizes. It will launch on the first day of summer: June 20. At some point, fans of AI bands with names such as Glacier Fang and Lipstick Trigger will also be able to win concert T-shirts and purchase cans of the drink with throwback pricing at upcoming events in other markets.

In LA, The Fizz will exit the FM airwaves at the end of June, but its pop 40 will live on at TheFizzFM.com, where listeners can not only hear hits from the nonexistent bands Liquid Rhythm, Halcyon Blur, Bubble Punks and Sugar Kane but also see their album art on a web page throwback to the earliest days of the internet.