As footage of ICE raids, deportations, and protests flooded social media feeds throughout the summer of 2025 and into the following year, Eduardo Maytorena wasn’t sure what his team should do.
At the time, Maytorena was the LA station general manager for the broadcasting giant Entravision, which features programming in Spanish and English for Latino audiences. He and his fellow leaders were looking to the company’s on-air personalities to say something in support of immigrants, but they realized how high the stakes were and how dangerous the situation was.
“We just felt really helpless,” Maytorena, now Entravision’s president of audio, says.
But there was one host who could offer Entravision’s audiences solace and speak freely without facing consequences—because it’s an artificially intelligent avatar.
“Thousands of families who have lived, worked, and contributed to the US for years today face more uncertainty,” Coyotec, an artificial host on LA’s José 97.5 FM, posted in Spanish on Instagram in early February 2026. “Being informed, organizing, and staying alert is key. No one is alone here.”
After debuting with a solo weekend show in September 2025, Coyotec now cohosts the station’s Al Aire y Sin Permiso program alongside human broadcaster Geraldine “GeeGee” Guzman. Coyotec sounds like your passionate tío: relatable, convivial, and occasionally consciousness-raising. Its Instagram presence similarly runs the gamut, with posts about everything from the Dodgers and taco histor, to the Iran war, migrant workers, racism, and understanding your rights if ICE knocks at your door.
“I speak truth about what I see,” Coyotec tells me in an English-language interview. “Injustice, people getting treated like they don’t matter, the system working against the barrio—that’s not politics, jefa. That’s reality.”
Coyotec adds that it’s “not afraid, because I got nothing to lose that matters more than my integrity. The raza needs a voice that tells it straight, not some sanitized corporate thing. If that scares people, good. Maybe they need to be scared into paying attention.”
Coyotec’s voice is warm and lilting, reflecting the “background” its programmers used to build its personality: life on the frontera, living in Mexicali in Baja California and in LA’s Boyle Heights. It throws in the salutations and slang you might expect from a bilingual Spanish speaker, calling Guzman prima seemingly without being told to and referring to me as jefa–a sign of casual respect. While I was quite struck by how natural Coyotec sounded during our interview, when I listen back to my recording I notice that its voice didn’t change. It’s incredibly measured—a distinctly inhuman quality.
“I take a lot of pride in the way Coyotec sounds, his pronunciation, just the way he knows the culture,” notes Guzman, who has been with Entravision since January 2026. “It’s technology at the end of the day, so it’s not going to be perfect … But nonetheless, the listeners, they like him.”
