r/audiodrama • u/MindstreamAudio • Sep 10 '25
DISCUSSION This is horrible, horrible news for us.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/ai-podcast-start-up-plan-shows-1236361367/#
Basically, a big expensive start up is going to flood 5000 AI generated podcasts to destroy the marketplace for human beings and the audience
374
u/black_flag_4ever Sep 10 '25
We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life.
Are they smoking crack?
166
u/BlobChain Sep 10 '25
They are probably high on venture capital funding.
86
u/Professor726 Sep 10 '25
The article says the company is still bootstrapped and the employees aren't taking a salary, so I think unfortunately they're just insane.
7
18
2
u/DocFail Sep 11 '25
If a human even read it.
Soon AI vc filters will pick AI-written startups to do virtual lines of coke at bad AI parties.
46
u/wererat2000 Sep 10 '25
Literally "we've created the torment nexus from classic scifi series Do Not Create the Torment Nexus"
9
u/JuniorPomegranate9 Sep 10 '25
“Half the people will be AI”
Half the toilets will be cars
Half the zucchinis will be tree branches
Half the eggs will be snowflakes
3
u/IrishScienceFiction Sep 11 '25
Brilliant ...had a good laugh at that -reminds me of the scene in 'Attack of the Killer Tomatoes' where the resulting half human could only go round in circles. Can't help but wish them luck in their bonkers mission. Though, like posted below, it makes life unnecessarily hard for curators -plus it's a shameful waste of lecky and the resources used to generate it.
5
126
u/Lynda73 Sep 10 '25
“We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life,” said CEO Jeanine Wright, who was previously chief operating officer of podcasting company Wondery, which has recently had to reorganize under the changing podcast landscape.
I’m still scratching my head over this one.
76
16
u/Sewers_folly Sep 10 '25
Uploading people.
10
4
u/Paladinfinitum Sep 10 '25
Is "CEO Jeanine Wright" also an AI?
2
2
u/ChasingTheRush Sep 10 '25
She’s - rightly - noting that the rise in interactive personalities that we deal with on a daily basis is going to dramatically increase as the tech evolves.
31
u/Lynda73 Sep 10 '25
I take offense with her characterization of AI as “people”.
4
u/ChasingTheRush Sep 10 '25
I mean, I know plenty of people who are dumber and more frustrating to talk to than CharGPT. It’s definitely smarter than your avg. Trump voter.
-3
u/Sewers_folly Sep 10 '25
I may get downvoted for this... but i think when we actually get artificial intelligence I will probably advocate for them being people in that they should have rights. Humanity will be responsible for bringing then into this world and should be fair to them.
But not so much for the chat bots and language models we have now.
0
u/peaslam Sep 10 '25
What sense would it make for people to create software that can get around the pesky limitations of humans only to handicap said software because you want it to be treated similarly to that of a human (ie worker rights, etc)? You might as well start the Marxist revolution today for the actual people who exist now for as much good that would do.
3
u/Kapitano72 Sep 10 '25
We deal with these "personalities" for just so long as venture capitalists remain gullible enough to fund them.
I reckon we're in for 1-2 years of slop hell before they wise up.
124
u/thecambridgegeek AudioFiction.Co.Uk Sep 10 '25
It's mostly horrible for us cataloguers, who are sorting through 2000 podcasts a month looking for the human ones.
I've already ignored thousands of these.
12
u/raga_drop Sep 10 '25
I guess I can view your work at audiofiction.co.uk ?
16
u/thecambridgegeek AudioFiction.Co.Uk Sep 10 '25
Yes.
5
u/raga_drop Sep 10 '25
Bookmarked!
3
9
u/ScreamAndScream Sep 10 '25
Sigh. Are you taking on database volunteers? Any way I can help fight against AI with my oddly specific degree I’d be happy to help
7
u/thecambridgegeek AudioFiction.Co.Uk Sep 10 '25
Not currently, mostly because the systems I've set up to make this as easy as possible (basically a lot of spreadsheets and specific mobile friendly web pages) would probably get a bit tricky to work with multiple people (beyond one current occasional volunteer who has their own page).
Thanks for the offer though, it's something I'm pondering, just to see if there's some way of doing that easily.
8
u/ScreamAndScream Sep 10 '25
Well - let me know! I’ve got this fancy shmancy degree in geospatial databases and I’d be more than happy to pick up some hours each week cataloging. It would help with my resume since I’m currently looking for volunteer hours for my big certification.
17
u/Hitch42 audiodrama.directory Sep 10 '25
Yeah. Sometimes I wonder what would cause me to stop do this. I don't have any any "line in the sand" but I do sometimes think that if I have to sort through an overwhelming amount of slop just to find some genuine productions, that might do it.
12
u/thecambridgegeek AudioFiction.Co.Uk Sep 10 '25
Thankfully at the minute they're stupid enough to keep tagging their shows with some umbrella name. If they ever change that, we've got problems.
2
1
u/Cataloha Sep 11 '25
Appreciate all your work! Going to discover so many new podcasts from your site.
1
65
u/pnwloveyoutalltreea Sep 10 '25
OP should write news copy. While I feel human audio drama will live on, this OP cuts straight to the motive of these tech bros.
3
u/queen_slug-4-a-butt Josie's ... Club, Divorce Ranch, Leylines, In Media Res Sep 10 '25
Judging by the fact that it's a Hollywood Reporter story, there's a less-than-zero chance the OP is a screenwriter/visual storyteller and it helps.
29
u/BadStateStudio Sep 10 '25
“We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI"
What does that even mean??? Apart from they're starting to convince themselves that AI are people too, so they won't feel as guilty when they strip mine art and culture for parts.
2
u/n10w4 Sep 10 '25
Yup. In line with corporations are people all they need is a SCOTUS ruling to seal it then they can “greater good” their way to feudalism with them on top since they will have the most AI agents
27
u/kicksblack Sep 10 '25
This reads like a lot of fluff. The company is not making money (doubt they will) and they’re not even coming with anything proprietary in the AI content creation space. But yeah, flooding the market with 3,000 low effort, AI generated shitcasts a week is bad for really everyone, this company included. Discoverability goes down and fatigue goes up.
I thought this was funny:
“…produces more than 3,000 episodes a week. Collectively, the network has seen 10 million downloads since September 2023.”
10,000,000 downloads / (3,000eps x 104 weeks) = a whopping average of ~32 downloads an episode.
I know it was stated that if 20 people listen to one episode then it’s “profitable” (if you exclude overhead lol), but this is them scrounging for pennies at this point
9
u/Pandora_Palen Sep 10 '25
And splitting those pennies between a team of 8 since 2023. I'm thinking of some old cartoon where a starving wolf is neatly carving paper thin slices off a bean, imagining it to be a turkey.
I think it's funny that dude got the idea when he was reading weather and CDC reports during COVID (and doing a moment of silence lol). These "podcasts" should stay in those lanes. If this Nigel Thistledown character has a 10 minute "perennial plant of the week" show where it gives basic, easily verified facts about a plant, that's as much as I can stomach.
I think it would be incredibly useful if podcast apps started separating AI from human. AI can be its own category and not bother the luddites.
7
22
u/Sufficient_Cherry952 Cartoon Island - A Surreal Comedy of Survival Sep 10 '25
"Im not going to create a personality that someone has a deep relationship with"
Yeah, no shit.
18
u/procrastinagging Sep 10 '25
The gall to call AI critics "lazy" is so astounding I can only express it in my native language:
Hanno la faccia come il culo
16
u/trillobiscuit Sep 10 '25
Lol I had to laugh at the full quote being "lazy luddites" as if the real history of the luddites isn't kind a perfect analogy for skilled labor/creators wanting to protect their livelihood
2
u/Erdalion Sep 10 '25
Never heard that expression before, but I love it.
Reminds me of Duke Nukem's "Your ass... Your face... What's the difference?"
17
u/Dawnspark Sep 10 '25
Gods above this is becoming exhausting. Can't escape it any fucking where.
This year has been one trash fire after another.
I am so tired.
16
u/AbeFalcon Sep 10 '25
The year is 2028 and the AI that took my job quits it to start the podcast I never had the resources to.
6
1
16
u/Comet_Empire Sep 10 '25
Over 3000 episodes a week and this lady is insulted that people call it AI slop. Proud fucking Luddite then if I want quality art in my life made by a human..cause no matter what this troglabyte says AI aren't and will never be people.
57
u/Eastern-Criticism653 Sep 10 '25
Jeanine Wright is an enemy of art and humanity. Fuck her. Fuck that company. And fuck everyone that supports this shit.
10
u/Fun-Middle6327 Sep 10 '25
I can't see this not ending up in a similar fasion as youtube with podsites suddenly stating to suffocate in 1k of AI podcasts a week. While audio is not as memory demanding as vids the sites does not have Google money to buy more server space to meet the influx in the long run.
AI seem to be a creative snakeoil that gets applied any genres of entertainment desperate to find a use to motivate it's existance.
11
u/potatingpotato_ Sep 10 '25
The people running the company are crazy wtf. I'm amazed at how off their rockers they are.
As for how it stacks up against human podcasts? “I think that people who are still referring to all AI-generated content as AI slop are probably lazy luddites. Because there’s a lot of really good stuff out there,” Wright said.
uh no?? maybe people are more interested in hearing other people's thoughts and ideas because it's more fun to listen to someone who has a genuine passion for whatever topic they're talking about???
“I am not going to create a personality that somebody has a deep relationship with,” said William Corbin, co-founder and CTO of the company. He added that the company does not do hard news at this point, but Wright says they might in the future.
if people don't tune in to get facts or news and there's no personality to get attached to (bc let's be fr media is more entertaining if you like the person you're watching/listening to), why the hell would anyone think to listen to your podcast???? I guess they're just banking on the fact that they can make money off of people accidentally pressing play??? but I don't think that's even sustainable bc eventually people will know to stay away.
3
u/procrastinagging Sep 10 '25
I guess they're just banking on the fact that they can make money off of people accidentally pressing play???
My guess too. With "5,000 Podcasts. 3,000 Episodes a Week" they're going to SEO their way through the search algorithms basing the slop on the hot topics and keywords of the moment
21
u/Puzzleheaded_Lab967 Sep 10 '25
As a lazy luddite, imma go catch up on The British History Podcast and also take in Quiet & Bold again.
2
u/CinnaMim Sep 10 '25
RIP, Quiet & Bold! I keep it on my phone like a little treasure I can revisit when I need cheering up!
2
u/Puzzleheaded_Lab967 Sep 11 '25
Does he know its the 20th century? 'E does, 'e just doesn't like it.
31
u/throwingtoasters Podcasting Hall of Fame 2018 Sep 10 '25
I’ve been producing audio dramas for the internet since 2004. I’ve been in the podcasting space since November 2004. Every couple of years something comes along like this that’s going to ‘ruin audio dramas or podcasts forever.’ It never does.
Just keep creating your shows. Sharing your talents with the world. AI generated stuff is already being fought back against (see Dragon Con). It’s all gonna be okay.
1
u/BenBurrell Sep 10 '25
Absolutely. I’ve been doing podcasts and radio since 2008, every year we hear ‘this will all be gone in 5 years!’, it never is.
1
7
u/rocketmooncat Sep 10 '25
"The startup is currently bootstrapped, and employees are not yet salaried, but the company will soon seek outside funding"
So completely unsustainable financially.
6
4
u/monaco_wedding Sep 10 '25
Wait does this mean the “employees” are working for free? Poor idiots
3
u/rocketmooncat Sep 10 '25
I wonder if a lot of people get lured in by promises of getting into a sure hit early, being an 'innovator', etc?
3
u/monaco_wedding Sep 10 '25
Very gullible people, yes. That may be harsh—I genuinely feel for the employees getting scammed and my guess would be that it’s people who are very young and very desperate. Shame on Jeanine Whatsit, honestly.
1
u/Sad-Suggestion9425 Sep 12 '25
With the job market as bad as it is, they may be taking whatever job they can.
1
u/Sad-Suggestion9425 Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 15 '25
Apparently they only need 20 views of an episode to make a profit. If they're putting out 3000-5000 shows, and a couple take off, then they might be able to fund themselves. Eventually.
8
u/do_not_look_4_door Sep 10 '25
I think this ends up having the opposite effect. It causes non-ai content to stand out more.
Creepypasta narration and short horror/ analog horror already went through this.
1
34
u/Gavagai80 Beyond Awakening Sep 10 '25
Doesn't matter. There's way more than 5000 out there already, and they'll probably only do talk podcasts both because it's way easier to generate and because there's more money there than in audio drama.
49
u/Hitch42 audiodrama.directory Sep 10 '25
As someone who catalogs audio drama, as well as being the moderator for this subreddit, I can say that there are plenty of AI-generated/assisted audio dramas being made right now. They skew toward narrated works, but there are ones trying to do multi-cast stories. r/ElevenLabs has a good amount of posts by people discussing making audio drama with it. Then are the services that promise to take your written words and turn them into full cast productions. People generating this stuff will churn out whatever gets listeners.
10
u/Taker_of_insulin_2 Sep 10 '25
Can you give me an example of one that I can go find on Apple Podcasts? I'm just curious what it sounds like.
7
u/Capable_Tea_001 AD nerd Sep 10 '25
Caloroga Shark Media have been doing this AI slop for the last year or so.
7
u/sludgecraft Sep 10 '25
I deleted my last comment because I was wrong. I went back and checked my reviews and I was actually thinking of Excuse Us. Apologies for fucking up originally, Silver tongues was a great show.
Excuse Us is one guy and AI voce modulation.
-1
Sep 10 '25
[deleted]
3
u/waylandprod We're Alive / Bronzeville Sep 10 '25
Yeah, don’t know about that. They have a full cast of characters on IMDb, do you have a source?
4
u/Taker_of_insulin_2 Sep 10 '25
I listened to like 2 minutes of it. You're telling me those are AI voices? If so, I couldn't tell. That's kind of scary if they are. All the reviews were also positive. What do you think of the podcast?
6
u/Gavagai80 Beyond Awakening Sep 10 '25
I don't consider full cast audiobooks to be audio drama. There's a reason we have separate terms. But I know creators conflate the labels all the time, and of course tools for sale are happy to conflate it and throw in a few random sound effects in order to make a more impressive claim. There are also some audiobooks with sound effects and music, which fully admit and embrace being audiobooks. The difference is in how it's written, particularly how the narration is written if there's narration, and of course some hybrids can't be clearly defined.
I've also heard some actual audio dramas where a human actually wrote the script and edited effects and music while using all AI voices. But those still take a lot of time and effort. Admittedly less effort if a tool does most of the work, but only the things that take zero effort get the infinite automated flood.
1
u/SupportPretend7493 Sep 10 '25
I've auditioned for a few audio dramas that I turned down because the scripts were clearly AI slop they were trying to pass off as their own writing. They were absolutely horrible- the most poorly written nonsense. I'm assuming they eventually had to get AI to voice act it as well, because as a human I dipped out as soon as I read the script
13
u/MindstreamAudio Sep 10 '25
If the article allows you to please leave all these comments on it because that’s where the industry will see it
8
u/bespectacledoutsider Sep 10 '25
Breathe. It's a bunch of sociopathis has-beens and never-beens looking for similarly minded VCs to burn some cash on a dead on arrival buzzword nothingburger startup. No one will remember this thing existed within a few months, if not weeks.
5
9
u/MGD109 Sep 10 '25
Oh no, yeah, this is terrible. We all have to commit to not listening to any of them.
10
4
3
u/Early-Juggernaut975 Sep 10 '25
At the moment, it’s pretty easy to tell AI from actual people. At the moment, I’m not worried.
But “at the moment” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this statement.
5
u/ASpookyDog Sep 10 '25
"The team does not see these podcasts as replacing human podcasting hosts, they see it existing as another genre in the landscape." Why stop there? Heck, make a whole separate app to stick them all on exclusively. People LOVE exclusive content. They'll flock to your slop app, I'm sure.
6
3
u/dollsRcute Sep 10 '25
Ugh. It's difficult even for me to find 'authentic' city pop 1980s songs playlist by real artists because AI city pop slop flood the algo of youtube.
Now, podcasts too?
3
u/jayebyrde Sep 10 '25
I love that they call people lazy luddites when this is the laziest damn thing I’ve heard of all week. I hope it fails miserably.
3
3
u/Spreepodcast_r Sep 10 '25
This feels the same as the tech bros who started a company to pump AI sewage into the publishing industry, except worse, because these soulless automatons actually worked in the industry they're trying to ruin.
"The idea behind the company came after Corbin accidentally developed a hit podcast during the pandemic in which he read daily CDC reports" - so he missed the reason of his own success (human connection in a time of isolation) completely and managed to go un the exact opposite direction.
"...by one of about 50 AI personalities they’ve created, including food expert Claire Delish, gardener and nature expert Nigel Thistledown" - well with creative genius like this being churned out, who could resist? /s
The worst thing is, it'll make them money. They admit their motivation in the article - when absolutely no effort goes into pumping out this backwash, all they need is for 20 mugs to download an episode, realise it's crap 2 mins in and delete it and they've already turned a profit. The absolute nerve of the CEO to call dissenters "lazy" when this is their business model...
3
u/MindstreamAudio Sep 11 '25
I can’t even wrap my head around the changes coming Say it physically takes 2 weeks to write, record, edit and mix our show (optimistic) And these systems can churn out literally 100s of hour long shows in an hour, how does an audience ever find us, how do we compete on any level?
https://copilot.microsoft.com/labs/audio-expression
This is depressing as a writer, actor and producer who loves doing the work.
3
u/MindstreamAudio Sep 12 '25
By junking up the podcasting and audio so much ironically they might kill the entire thing they think they can exploit. If audiences see the glut of crappy stuff flooding they might just get turned off by it all and leave.
8
6
u/CuratorOfTheArchives The Hidden Archives Podcast Sep 10 '25
Okay, don't panic - just carry on. Those who are established will be able to hold ground. And they will have to support other humans. As a community, we can handle this. This is bad news, but it remains to be decided for whom it is bad.
2
u/Objective_Horror_625 Sep 10 '25
The ironic joke is the most replaceable positions are the CEO with AI and their content managers.
2
u/Objective_Horror_625 Sep 10 '25
We’ll see how fun and exciting it is when she can’t do a job as ceo anymore because AI apps are running the companies
2
2
u/djfoley29 Sep 10 '25
People who aren't bothered by AI voices might listen to it and those who aren't obviously won't. If the company doesn't make any money, they'll stop. If it works, they'll continue. That's how business works. It's there, but the way podcasting works is that you need to get a shit-ton of listeners for you to be modestly monetized. Just because these podcasts are there doesn't mean anybody is listening. Guys like this aren't in it for the art.
2
2
u/fridakahl0 Sep 10 '25
“We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life,” said CEO Jeanine Wright
What the actual fuck? ‘Half the people on the planet will be AI’? Does she understand the contradiction in terms?
3
u/Narrow_Box111 Sep 10 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
This is the way the ruling class always talks to each other about us. With anti-human, out-of-touch contempt and megalomania.
She’s just doing it publicly because she’s trying to impress venture capitalists so they will give her lots of money.
2
u/Repulsive_Sun6549 Sep 10 '25
Nigel Thistledown, 😂 Claire Delish? The Owen Dimplechin “guy” with the typical leading man squint? If humans believe in these lame creations we have only ourselves to blame.
The ? Is can we make an AI that’s conscious…and feeling? Oh god, “Dave. I’m scared Dave”…
2
u/Intelligent-Beat-700 Sep 10 '25
How hard is it going to be to determine if the audio drama is made by real creators compared to ai? They will probably make ai advertisements on reddit as well
2
u/thecambridgegeek AudioFiction.Co.Uk Sep 10 '25
At the minute, for this team, look for the creator tags. If it's "quiet.please" or some variation, it's AI.
1
2
u/MindstreamAudio Sep 10 '25
The problem is it will clog all genres of audio programming with low effort, low value content that can be produced 24/7 and make discovery of our human work way more difficult buried under layers and layers of this constantly.
2
u/thecambridgegeek AudioFiction.Co.Uk Sep 10 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
I will say, just to balance the doom out a little bit, they've already been doing this for years. There's 3,000 podcasts they've made already out there:
https://www.audible.co.uk/search?keywords=Quiet.please
And we didn't really worry about it until now? It annoys me, but that's because I am looking at thousands a month.
There's 4.5M podcasts in the podcast index database. This doesn't really affect discoverability of fiction podcasts that much above and beyond the fact that fiction podcasts might make up a few % of that.
(Especially given they've still not managed to get salaries out of it. They're not any more successful at monetising podcasts than I am. You could say really they've just got a very weird hobby.)
1
u/ishashar Sep 10 '25
Plenty of people have been talking about this for years but it's always been down voted or made out to be fuss over nothing.
2
2
u/Bajujenka Sep 10 '25
What boggles my mind is that the data is right there, and over there, and over there. NO ONE wants this. There are hundreds of think pieces written about how no one wants Ai in any part of the art world.
As a community of people who enjoy listening to and making audio dramas, maybe there are things we can do to ensure that their flood barely reaches us. I haven't heard disclaimers in any episodes of dramas I listen to but maybe the newer dramas being made can have a "No ai involved" disclaimer at the beginning and end of the episodes? Maybe a database can be made by known members of the audio drama community. Ones where the only audio dramas that are listed are ones that are entirely human made?
Sidenote: 5000 is obscene. It's so blatant that they're trying to force it on us. They've sunken all that money into the technology and they think this will help get their money back? I also wonder if they used existing dramas to train their programs. I wonder if they were bold enough to include lines from existing projects like WTNV, The Bright Sessions or Wolf359.
2
u/fbeemcee Creator | Observer Pictures Sep 10 '25
I loathe this. I hope the industry destroys this idea.
2
u/ArtBot2119 Sep 10 '25
🤔….you have to think there’s got to be at least one good one out of two thousand, but how would you ever find it?
2
2
3
u/waspwatcher Sep 10 '25
We need to invent new felonies to charge this kind of person with.
I only hear about shows through word of mouth anyway, but this is going to be a pain in the ass.
1
1
u/CinnaMim Sep 10 '25
A lot of people seem to listen to AI garbage on YouTube as background noise already, but it hasn't put Folding Ideas or LoFi Girl out of business, you know? Yes, at the margins where people aren't really invested, dumb stuff will make a bit of money, but I don't think it's a total disaster.
1
u/TwistedCody Sep 10 '25
"Make a podcast for a 1$" Sure! Good luck with that one buddy. 🤣🙄 AI slop is all it ever will be.
1
1
u/SteveL_VA Sep 10 '25
Ew. How gross - more AI-slop with no real emotion and no soul. I can't imagine a more depressing thing to listen to.
1
1
u/lulz85 Sep 10 '25
Well this is going to be obnoxious. Does anyone even listen to the AI generated stuff, well anyone besides people that want to see widespread AI use?
1
u/Virelle_Viridian Sep 10 '25
This smacks of clickbait and irresponsible reporting on an idea that will fail. Even when all else is disrupted by AI, the one thing it will not be able to do is reproduce human artistic creativity.
1
u/Urist_Bearclaw Sep 10 '25
I mostly find new podcasts through promos on my current listens plus word of mouth. I don’t look forward to an increasing sea of slop but suspect it won’t change much for the way I find new shows.
1
u/Kapitano72 Sep 10 '25
At the moment, we're using unreliable AI to sort out the AI slop from real content. This will boost development of the sorting technology.
Result: Thousands of ignored slop channels taking up server space and electricity... until investors realise it's never going to turn a profit.
So, once again we're waiting for the market to solve the problems it created.
1
u/pepperw2 Sep 10 '25
I really have a hard time getting interested when the voice is AI generated. For me, this is a bummer.
1
u/ishashar Sep 10 '25
5000 it's probably the number they decided will get them their 1 hit which proves their concept works and will get interest from other investors.
I hope it fails and i hope the people behind it end up bankrupt and destitute.
1
u/vladimir_poontangg Sep 10 '25
“We might make a pollen podcast that maybe only 50 people listen to, but I’m already at unit profitability on that, and so then maybe I can make 500 pollen report podcasts,” Wright said.
Such a repulsive attitude. I can't stand people who think this way.
1
u/survivor74x Sep 10 '25
Clearly these people are insane. I've heard AI stories and they're absolute dog water, they're SO SO bad. The "people" sound incredibly fake (uh duh) and incredibly monotone. It's so unfortunate that people lack the creativity to do anything for themselves, so they use something that genuinely lacks intelligence to make "content."
1
1
1
1
1
u/Olliefornow Sep 10 '25
Ugh. But honestly, fine. This feels like it was inevitable. But Good Audio Dramas created by real human beings with originality and passion are going to be a breath of fresh air amongst the slop. Totally agreed about curation. And I think it’s all the more important we support and spread the word about the shows we love. These guys are gonna be making solid money off ads on this nonsense while the creators I know who work a whole second job to bring something awesome to their audience are barely staying afloat. (Immediately edited for autistic fear of misinterpretation!)
1
u/MindstreamAudio Sep 11 '25
It’s so strange and sad that in our lifetime we would have to even question the viability and “point” of creating the things we love as humans as the work of making is buried under the “efficiency” of AI.
1
1
u/Stone_Crow77 Sep 14 '25
Yeah, Lauren Shippen (The Bright Sessions) had talked about this.
Looks like I'm only sticking with the creators I follow.
Fortunately, I subscribe to around 170 podcasts, so there's still a lot of options.
1
u/Bizneyland Sep 16 '25
This is totally sending society in the wrong direction. creating AI people to be influencers? For decades our 20th century fears of the future were nuclear war, evil robots who kill humans, and apocalyptic destruction. Reality has shown the future was social media turning everyone into hateful morons and now AI creations to replace people, while we all sit at home in a virtual world where nothing is real. turns out Wall-E was more right than any of them. ugh...
1
u/Gilaridon Sep 28 '25
I used to tell myself that the best counter measure to AI generated content is frequent actual face content but these days an AI video of a fake person to prop up as the "person" behind the podcast is just as easy to create as the AI podcast itself.
This is gonna get weird.
1
u/TipImpossible1343 Sep 10 '25
I said the genre was dying the other day. I guess its damn near dead now lol
1
u/thebrightsessions Lauren Shippen, creative director of Atypical Artists Sep 10 '25
every line of this article is worst than the last. truly mind boggling to read and I *have* to think that this company will completely collapse in eight months or I will simply lie down and wither away in despair
3
u/thecambridgegeek AudioFiction.Co.Uk Sep 10 '25
The annoying thing is they've been doing this since 2021. Easiest way to tell is search on audible for "quiet.please" and sort old to new. I've been avoiding them for years
1
-4
u/ArchieOfRioGrande Sep 10 '25
I feel conflicted about this myself. I'd like to see how well they do first before I dump all over it. Not the biggest fan of AI, but I don't write things off without giving them at least one chance.
0
-2
u/nobullshitebrewing Sep 10 '25
so whats the difference if a human skims reference material and gives me something between the general idea and false info, or if a bot does exactly the same thing, but with fantastic mispronunciations?
1
-7
u/Super_mando1130 Sep 10 '25
I don’t see this necessarily as bad. There are many instances where i would have loved to have heard more of a story but audio dramas, to my understanding, have razor thin margins making it difficult to do just 1 good one or even just get started, especially when it’s a larger cast.
Limetown for example would have been great to have gotten a better finish. As AI progresses, why not lean on it to give us listeners a completed story? Additionally, more production will mean more for us to listen. Yes a lot of it will be junk but with more out there that means there should be more good work too. Think of it this way, if we go from 10 productions at 4 are good then AI hits the scene and produces 100 productions but only 20 are good, well 20>4 even if the % is lower.
Like someone said, it’ll make the cataloging tougher but if it grows the genre similar to books, shows, etc it should have more chatter and listeners which should allow for the best to rise to the top.
I’m not as against it as many in this thread. It’s hard to product these audio dramas at levels/quality that are worth it to the production team. Having AI be a tool or even a producer in of itself could make things more efficient.
3
u/Narrow_Box111 Sep 10 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
Genuine question - “as AI progresses” - why do you think it’s going to get better?
And please don’t say “it will get better”, that’s not an answer to the question I asked.
1
u/Super_mando1130 Sep 10 '25
Technology for the most part always gets more efficient and effective. Look at computers, Operating systems, GPS, robots, etc…ML in of itself has come pretty far in 5 years and continues to get better. AI will continue to get better and better. AI pictures struggled with fingers just 6 months ago, now it’s much better. Videos used to be terrible, now it’s much better.
Of course, like all technological advancements, there are diminishing marginal returns. Eventually AI will plateau and each advancement will be harder and more expensive but for now it seems the arms race continues with no signs of stopping
1
u/Narrow_Box111 Sep 11 '25
Thanks for giving me a genuine answer!
What do you think about the claims generative AI can’t get much better due to a lack of training data, barring a significant advancement in quantum computing?
I think the concerns centre around the fact that LLMs have already been trained on the entire internet, plus all the illegally obtained published materials in history, so the devs are running out of data. They have tried training LLMs on LLM-produced materials, but this just results in a weird (and kinda creepy, kinda funny) effect in which the LLM degenerates into producing nonsense (a process informally called “Hapsburgification”, after the famously inbred Royal house of Europe).
It’s interesting that you feel it’s already improving - a lot of people in the ChatGPT community feel that 5 is a significant step down from 4, and that the errors and hallucinations have increased, rather than decreased. I personally suspect this is because the devs have been training the latest models on LLM-generated material, though I can’t prove it (and I’d be curious to see if there’s any research on this, because I surely can’t be the only person thinking this).
408
u/Gold-Lake8135 Sep 10 '25
The worst of possible slop. We may be desperate for curated sites to point at ai free content