The outcry sparked by the Washington Post\u2019s launch of AI-generated podcasts has gone in one ear of the newspaper\u2019s leadership and out the other, which isn\u2019t too dissimilar to what might happen to anyone listening to the slop it\u2019s trying to peddle.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the Jeff Bezos-owned publication doubled down on its personalized podcasts push, brushing aside the criticism from readers and its own reporters alike.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is how products get built and developed in the digital age: ideation, research, design and prototyping, development, and then Beta,\u201d a WaPo spokesperson told TheWrap<\/a>. \u00a0\u201cOnly if they prove to be successful for the customer do they then get launched. As stated clear on Your Personal Podcast, it is currently in Beta.\u201d<\/p>\n WaPo launched its \u201cYour Personal Podcast\u201d feature last week, sparking immediate dissent in its ranks. Staffers were furious about the podcast AI<\/a> inventing and misattributing quotes, Semafor reported<\/a> Friday, and even sometimes editorializing on stories. Some staffers questioned the tech\u2019s seemingly nonexistent guardrails, Status reported<\/a>, while another described it as a \u201ctotal disaster.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Further underscoring the staggering incompetence on display, followup reporting<\/a> from Semafor revealed that WaPo had conducted its own tests prior to launching which showed that up to 84 percent of the AI-generated podcasts scripts didn\u2019t meet the newspaper\u2019s standards \u2014 and were therefore unpublishable.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a significant disconnect between the company\u2019s newsroom and its product team in charge of the AI rollout. The podcast\u2019s product team sees the errors as a normal part of rolling out a new and still experimental feature, and said it would \u201citerate through the remaining issues.\u201d<\/p>\n Similar jargon was on display in the paper\u2019s statement to TheWrap, and it\u2019s equal parts telling and jarring that such tech-minded rhetoric is being deployed in the context of journalism. The AI may not be doing the work of an actual journalist, but it\u2019s taking over the role of packaging the news to listeners. Would a human news anchor be given this much leeway, and be allowed to screw up more details than they get right because they\u2019re learning on the job, or in tech parlance, \u201citerating through it\u201d?<\/p>\n The Post isn\u2019t the only newsroom deploying AI. The New York Times uses it to help generate headlines, and Bloomberg\u2019s website features an AI that summarizes its articles. Many publications have some form of AI chatbot trained on their archives<\/a>. But WaPo has been particularly AI-evangelistic, signifying its transformation under Jeff Bezos\u2019 ownership. Along with deploying AI summaries and an AI chatbot, it also put forth a plan for letting non-professional writers<\/a> submit articles written with AI.<\/p>\n The AI podcasts, however, seem to really have struck a nerve with its staff.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is truly astonishing that this was allowed to go forward at all,\u201d one WaPo editor fumed on Slack, per Semafor. \u201cNever would I have imagined that the Washington Post would deliberately warp its own journalism and then push these errors out to our audience at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf we were serious, we would pull this tool immediately,\u201d the editor added.<\/p>\n