FinlandMedia and entertainment2024 – ongoing

Sanoma

AI-written, synthetic-voice local weather forecasts for radio

Finnish media group Sanoma airs 78 extra AI-voiced weather forecasts a day on two radio stations

WorkingVendor's case studyVendor ↗

Problem

Sanoma's radio stations had no localized weather forecasts for small regions. Producing them by hand was not practical.

Approach

Azure OpenAI's GPT-4o writes five-sentence forecasts from Finnish Meteorological Institute data. A synthetic voice built with Azure Custom Neural Voice, trained on about 750 utterances, reads them three times a day for 26 regions.

Results

78additional forecasts produced per dayVendor's case study[1]

70%share of survey respondents who said the AI voice suited news fairly or very wellVendor's case study[1]

Takeaway

Sanoma tested listener attitudes before launch. A follow-up survey found 70% said the synthetic voice suited news fairly or very well.

Sources

Sanoma customer story (Azure AI Speech)
Microsoft23 Jun 2025Vendor publication

Source summaries

[1]Microsoft23 Jun 2025

Microsoft explains how Sanoma generates and voices local forecasts for 26 regions on two radio stations. It reports 78 added forecasts a day and listener survey results.

Full details are in the original sources.

Added 25 Oct 2026 · Updated 25 Oct 2026