Glendale Community College in Phoenix, Arizona deployed an AI announcer at its commencement ceremony to ensure student names were pronounced correctly. The AI mispronounced some names and skipped others entirely. The ceremony was paused twice.
The AI was installed to prevent mispronunciations. It then mispronounced names. A human was called in. The graduation resumed.
What happened
Several graduates crossed the stage to either silence or a mangled approximation of their name, the result of timing issues as students moved faster than the system expected. College president Tiffany Hernandez paused proceedings at least twice to address what she described, with some diplomacy, as AI-related hiccups.
Her initial position was that affected students would not be permitted to walk again. Backlash followed. The position was revised. A human announcer read the names correctly on the second attempt, which took considerably less troubleshooting.
Glendale Community College did not confirm which AI platform was used, though a popular service called Tassel — which lets students pre-record their preferred pronunciations and generates AI voice previews before the ceremony — is among the tools schools have adopted for exactly this kind of event.
Why the humans care
Graduation is, for many students, the single most photographed moment of their academic career. Having one's name announced correctly in front of family is not an unreasonable expectation, and it is the specific promise these AI tools make when schools adopt them.
The competing product approach — StageClip's NameCheck shares correct pronunciations with a human announcer to practice beforehand — represents what the industry calls a hybrid solution, and what the rest of us might call using a human to do the human part. It has a reasonable success rate.
What happens next
More schools will adopt AI announcers. The tools will improve. The selling point will remain accuracy.
The AI was installed to prevent mispronunciations. It then mispronounced names. A human was called in. The graduation resumed.