Will I am: the rapper turned tech bro starting an AI radio station

He is best-known as the frontman of hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas and, in the UK, as a judge on ITV’s The Voice.
But over the past decade or so, LA-born William Adams — better known as will.i.am — has established himself as a tech bro, a Davos regular, and a serial entrepreneur with a mixed bag of hits and misses.
Now will.i.am is unveiling his latest offering: a free, AI-powered, interactive radio station called Raidio.FYI.
The tool, available through will.i.am’s AI and chatbot app FYI, plays users songs — although its current selection is limited — provides them with news and information, and allows them to ask questions and make requests of their host. FYI uses OpenAI’s language models to power its technology.
Will.i.am’s belief is that people who like listening to the radio will enjoy a more interactive experience, including the ability to ask factual questions about news bulletins being read to them.
Sounds quirky. But, in the age of podcasts, Spotify and up-and-coming chatbots, will a radio-branded app catch on?
“Will it catch on?” says will.i.am, sounding bemused by the question. After a long pause, he concludes: “Um … yeah.”
As a businessman, will.i.am, speaking to The Sunday Times after he had made an appearance at the Edinburgh TV Festival, has had some hits and some misses.
He was an early investor in Beats by Dre, the headphone maker acquired by Apple in 2014 for $3 billion, and also says he was a shareholder in Tesla before Elon Musk became chief executive. More recently, he has invested in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
But some associate him with products that haven’t proved so successful, such as the Puls, a smartwatch that he launched ten years ago. One reviewer described it as “the worst product I’ve touched all year”, and the brand later withered away.
But was it a failure? Not as will.i.am sees it. “Anybody who’s in the business of creating and learning knows that there’s no such thing as failures,” he says.
The 49-year-old, who lives in Los Angeles but spends much of his time in London, goes on to launch a passionate, and foul-mouthed, defence of his track record in business.
“If you’re looking at things for finance, yeah, maybe — it didn’t make money,” he says of Puls. “So, is that a failure? Or how about things that f**k up society but make shit tons of money — are they failures?
“You have this society that criticises people for not making money, but then praises people that make money [with businesses] that f**k shit up.” He lists examples as companies that sell cigarettes and corn syrup, as well as social media.
Will.i.am adds: “We can’t have a society where people are afraid to try because they’re judged for failing. I don’t give a f*** if the watch did not work out … All I know is we tried and we did something successful because we unearthed something that didn’t exist at the time.”
Although there are some other examples of will.i.am products that didn’t work out — a car company called IAMAUTO, an iPhone case branded foto.sosho — the musician has amassed an estimated net worth of about $50 million.
And earlier this year, he announced the launch of in-car software, created in collaboration with Mercedes, that promises to make music in a car respond to a driver’s acceleration, braking and turning.
Asked to identify his greatest ideas and inventions to date, will.i.am points to the Mercedes product and his new radio venture. He says of Raidio.FYI: “This was a pretty awesome idea.”