Talking to the Midnight Broadcast: Reviving 1990s City Memories with AI

If you could dial into a midnight broadcast from 30 years ago, what would you say? This project explores the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to reconstruct historical radio broadcasts, focusing on the cultural importance of preserving intangible heritage through sound. Shenzhen’s radio culture in the 1990s, influenced by Hong Kong’s openness to pop culture, shaped a generation of listeners. Inspired by the iconic 1990s Shenzhen midnight radio program, A Break at Service Station , the project revives its host Sophie, a figure beloved for her soothing voice and empathetic presence, as a digital twin with authentic sounds and genuine memories through AI voice cloning and large language models (LLMs). By integrating AI with city memories, the project reimagines a pivotal cultural moment while bridging generational distance—not through nostalgia, but through curiosity about a time of intimate, localized media. It reveals how AI can revive forgotten voices and reshape public memory in a rapidly evolving city.