Podcast Industry Under Siege as AI Bots Flood Airways with Thousands of Programs

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times: Popular podcast host Steven Bartlett has used an AI clone to launch a new kind of content aimed at the 13 million followers of his podcast "Diary of a CEO." On YouTube, his clone narrates "100 CEOs With Steven Bartlett," which adds AI-generated animation to Bartlett's cloned voice to tell the life stories of entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Richard Branson. Erica Mandy, the Redondo Beach-based host of the daily news podcast called "The Newsworthy," let an AI voice fill in for her earlier this year after she lost her voice from laryngitis and her backup host bailed out...

In podcasting, many listeners feel strong bonds to hosts they listen to regularly. The slow encroachment of AI voices for one-off episodes, canned ad reads, sentence replacement in postproduction or translation into multiple languages has sparked anger as well as curiosity from both creators and consumers of the content. Augmenting or replacing host reads with AI is perceived by many as a breach of trust and as trivializing the human connection listeners have with hosts, said Megan Lazovick, vice president of Edison Research, a podcast research company... Still, platforms such as YouTube and Spotify have introduced features for creators to clone their voice and translate their content into multiple languages to increase reach and revenue. A new generation of voice cloning companies, many with operations in California, offers better emotion, tone, pacing and overall voice quality...

Some are using the tech to carpet-bomb the market with content. Los Angeles podcasting studio Inception Point AI has produced its 200,000 podcast episodes, in some weeks accounting for 1% of all podcasts published that week on the internet, according to CEO Jeanine Wright. The podcasts are so cheap to make that they can focus on tiny topics, like local weather, small sports teams, gardening and other niche subjects. Instead of a studio searching for a specific "hit" podcast idea, it takes just $1 to produce an episode so that they can be profitable with just 25 people listening... One of its popular synthetic hosts is Vivian Steele, an AI celebrity gossip columnist with a sassy voice and a sharp tongue... Inception Point has built a roster of more than 100 AI personalities whose characteristics, voices and likenesses are crafted for podcast audiences. Its AI hosts include Clare Delish, a cooking guidance expert, and garden enthusiastNigel Thistledown...

Across Apple and Spotify, Inception Point podcasts have now garnered 400,000 subscribers.

Who are these people?

[speedplane]

I'm surprised people are actually listening to this dribble instead of just looking up the wikipedia article. If automated content can actually engage humans, we have no chance.

Re:Who are these people?

[jacks smirking reven]

The listeners are just other AI bots

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

Yep, it's like a dummy load in electronics. What you do is plug a set of bot listeners into bot podcasters and then use the circular flow to drive a pelton wheel that powers your mining rig.

Re:

[rickb928]

It's the opposite of a dummy load in electronics. Dummy loads are intended to safely dissipate power, while AI bots are intended to broadcast...

Re:Who are these people?

[Powercntrl]

I've yet to experience a podcast that wouldn't have been better as a written article. It's such a slog to get through someone droning on for 20 minutes, when I could've just skimmed the same article in a few seconds and gotten the gist of it.

I can only assume some people actually enjoy listening to yammering, and just getting to the fucking point already, is secondary.

Re:

[MikeDataLink]

I've yet to experience a podcast that wouldn't have been better as a written article. It's such a slog to get through someone droning on for 20 minutes, when I could've just skimmed the same article in a few seconds and gotten the gist of it.

I can only assume some people actually enjoy listening to yammering, and just getting to the fucking point already, is secondary.

It's not any different than sitting at a bar with a beer, talking to your friends about philosophy. It that too much of a slog for you too?

Re:

[Firethorn]

It is very different in the bar. There you can have a debate, question and clarify. With a podcast, you cannot.

Re:

[FlipperPA]

The conversation with my friends isn't monetized.

My friends don't pause every 30 seconds to promote something, or bug me to subscribe to something, or like something, or join some stupid email list.

Conversations go two ways, these AI slop machines are talking at you, not having a conversation.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

You've got to find petter podcasts, the once i listen to (ok thosw are real people MR Banks and crew) don't break every 30 seconds for commercials, ok they have a 45 second slot near the beginning and a longer sponsored part at the end (hey nice asey to skip if it doesn't interest me (which to be fair it often does(, But this may be an outlier as this is a bor technical potcats from the start "where too much networking would never be enugh".

Re:

[PsychoSlashDot]

I've yet to experience a podcast that wouldn't have been better as a written article. It's such a slog to get through someone droning on for 20 minutes, when I could've just skimmed the same article in a few seconds and gotten the gist of it.

I can only assume some people actually enjoy listening to yammering, and just getting to the fucking point already, is secondary.

Absolutely.

In English, the average speaking speed is about 145 words per minute.
In English, the average reading speed is about 250 words per minute.

I grant that audio has its place; audio books and podcasts are good for people who are driving, jogging, biking, or otherwise in motion. But... almost every podcast should come with a transcript. If we need or want context, then we can dip into the audio/video. Otherwise, these people are needlessly eating about 30% of our lives.

Re:

[vivian]

I would love it if there was some kind of mirror site for YouTube that would convert all the long video tutorial type videos into well formatted text with appropriate illustrations extracted from the video where necessary.
scanning the transcript sometimes helps, but it's not in a very easy to read format.

It's especially frustrating when I want to see how to do something or other in say, Unreal Engine, and nearly all resources available are YouTube videos instead of reasonable documentation or written tutori

Re:

[Ksevio]

Good thing about podcasts is you can listen to them on the go where the point isn't to get the gist of information, it's to be entertained without visuals.

Re:

[taustin]

For me, it's worse than that. I've yet to see (or hear) a podcast that I had any interest in the point of.

Re:

[coofercat]

I really don't get it either. However, my SO listens to podcasts when she goes out for a walk around the block. She'll be gone for (say) a half hour to an hour, so that time lends itself to some gentle "ingestion" of something hopefully thought provoking.

However, I'd imagine that in time you'll be able to ask Spotify or Audible or someone "give me a 60 minute podcast discussing how AI is both succeeding and failing to modernise the procurement process of large organisation, with particular attention to how

Re:

[CAIMLAS]

Personal preference, perhaps.

I listen to podcasts while I'm working in the shop or driving around. Usually at 2x. It's usually media and news analysis or long form stuff that I'd not have the time to consume otherwise.

Re: Who are these people?

[Malggi]

People doing chores.
People driving their car.
People exercising.
People with visual impairments.
Etc. Etc.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Those old enough to remember Talk Radio as a format.

Re: Who are these people?

[quido18]

Right, but for the life of me I couldn't tune any station talking about the dark side of the internet or an informed exchange between bug bounty hunters.

Re:

[newcastlejon]

FYI, the word is "drivel".

Re:

[taustin]

If the listeners can't tell the difference between AI slop and live podcasters, there are only two possibilitie:

Either the AI is really good, or

The live podcasters are as bad as the AI slop.

I know which way I'd bet.

Re:

[illaqueate]

his podcast is full of pseudoscience and grifters.... so basicallly Oprah for a different demographic

Re:

[supabeast!]

Probably gamers who need something to listen to while they play through the same mindless game over and over. The ones who are too smart to enjoy Twitch streams but not actually capable of reading for a sustained period of time.

Re: Who are these people?

[TJHook3r]

I'd be surprised if bots couldn't give a passable imitation - they have millions of podcasts to train on and often those podcasts are rated. Unless they go full mimic mode they probably won't hit the top tier though but could certainly replace the mid-tier. Even easier for audiobooks

Gross

[Smonster]

But to each their own. Some people like: “pro” wrestling, country music, and/ or “reality” television. So what’s some more slop to the trough?

Re: Gross

[Slashythenkilly]

The difference when you turn on pro-wrestling, you know what youre getting.

Re:

[MikeDataLink]

But to each their own. Some people like: “pro” wrestling, country music, and/ or “reality” television. So what’s some more slop to the trough?

I see what you did there. Well done my friend. Well done.

Re: Gross

[toutankh]

Why the quotes around "pro"? Are these wrestlers not paid to wrestle?

Easy

[nospam007]

Make them listen to each other.

To be fair, many podcasts were already slop

[gweihir]

Just not AI slop. Bad-quality things can often be replaced by cheaper to make other bad quality things. And nothing of value is lost.

I dont know how its legal

[Slashythenkilly]

Yesterday i ran into what i thought was a podcast with astrophysicist Brian Cox discussing travel and living barriers associated with Mars exploration. After a few minutes, something sounded off so dove into the description and comments to find out no this AI bs made to sound like Dr Cox and although some of it im sure was factual, it leaves one wondering how much is true and why go to the trouble of misrepresenting someone like that.

Re:

[taustin]

If they admitted it, they get away with it because money changed hands, and he signed the contract.

Profitable?

[SlashbotAgent]

it takes just $1 to produce an episode so that they can be profitable with just 25 people listening.

How do you make a penny with 25 listeners? I don't know any platform paying $1.01 for 25 listens/streams/downloads. Could someone please enlighten me?

Stevens Bartlet is indistinguishable from AI slop

[hydrodog]

I watched some of Steven Bartlett's podcasts. He never misses an opportunity to drag out an interview for 3x longer than necessary. The information content of the podcast can often fit on a single sheet of paper, less if you ignore bullshit. While the personalities are sometimes interesting, he will equally bring on nutrition bros and pitch them softball questions, All he cares about is getting revenue, and his content already was AI slop before AI was a thing.I suppose that means it was NI slop.

"Airways"?

[H_Fisher]

If our airways [wikipedia.org] were being filled, then we'd literally be drowning in AI slop. Truly a terrible fate.

I think our editor meant "airwaves," although that's not accurate, either, since "podcasts" aren't necessarily the same as "radio broadcasts."

Re:

[bn-7bc]

well airwaywes could still be accurate in a technical sense, since podcasts while driving or on public transit, is otten downloaded over cellular , but yea airwaves as in traditional broadcast radio (am/fm/dab/drm) it's not.

Re:

[votsalo]

The second link in the wikipedia disambiguation page you linked to is "Airway (aviation), an aerial route taken by airplanes".

Considering that the final part of the transmission of a podcast to human ears is "aerial", through physical air, and that the origin of the podcast may be from far away across the globe, the word seems appropriate.

Why do you listen to a podcast?

[allo]

Because of the people who make it?
Because of the unique content?
Because someone recommended it to you?

What would lead to AI podcasts being a competition to you?
If people like your podcast, they will not replace it with AI. And people who listen to it by chance because of some YouTube recommendation algorithm (and we know how broken these are) are not your target group anyway.

If you are doing a podcast to tell something to the world, you will build your subscriber base and have nothing to fear from anything automated.
Only generic content can be replaced by automated content.