{"id":622669,"date":"2026-05-04T09:50:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T09:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/622669\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T09:50:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T09:50:20","slug":"more-than-a-third-of-all-new-podcasts-are-ai-generated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/622669\/","title":{"rendered":"More Than a Third of All New Podcasts Are AI-Generated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">In 2024, Google rolled out what was at the time a pretty startling new feature as part of its NotebookLM AI suite: audio digests of information that were essentially podcasts, sometimes <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/former-npr-host-accuses-google-of-copying-his-voice-for-ai-offering-2000722402\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">featuring oddly familiar sounding synthetic voices<\/a>. It was a whole new implementation of generative AI. But it\u2019s not new anymore, and AI proliferation moves pretty fast, so today, AI-generated podcasts account for <a href=\"https:\/\/public.podcastindex.org\/24hourFeedReport.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">no less than a third of new podcast feeds<\/a>, according to the New Feeds Report at an open-sourced site called Podcast Index.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Picture what this means: an unknowably massive, apparently endless flood of synthetic chatter about every topic on Earth, bursting forth all the time like when they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gvoLdIdQv68\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">open those discharge outlets on the Three Gorges Dam<\/a>. And for what audience? It\u2019s not abundantly clear yet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The bizarre bluster from leadership at the companies that make these podcasts seems to be targeted at investors, not would-be listeners. For instance, in September of last year, Jeanine Wright, the CEO of an AI podcasting company called Inception Point AI <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/business\/digital\/ai-podcast-start-up-plan-shows-1236361367\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told the Hollywood Reporter<\/a>, \u201cWe believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that\u2019s bringing those people to life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2000753785\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/literally-podcast.jpg\" alt=\"Screenshot of Inception Point AI podcasts, including one called &quot;Definition of Literally&quot;\" width=\"1920\" height=\"849\"  \/>Screenshot from Inception Point AI <\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Following the \u201cContent\u201d link at the top of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inceptionpoint.ai\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Inception Point AI website<\/a> takes you to a page of podcasts. One of the ones in the top row as of this writing is called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spreaker.com\/podcast\/definition-of-literally--6816156\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Definition of Literally,<\/a>\u201d a podcast about the definition of the word literally. The episode I sampled was five minutes long, but starts with an ad.<\/p>\n<p>Inception Point AI did not return Gizmodo\u2019s request for comment on Saturday. We will update this article if we receive a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">At the time of the Hollywood Reporter\u2019s story, Inception Point AI said it was responsible for 5,000 total shows, and said it churned out 3,000 episodes per week. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/newsletters\/2026-04-30\/-podslop-proliferation-is-challenging-the-audio-industry\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">According to Bloomberg<\/a>, it now has 10,000 active shows, though its output was quoted at 877 new episodes in 48 hours\u2014so still around 3,000 per week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Does anyone actually listen to AI-generated podcasts? To some degree <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/podcasts\/comments\/1r643d8\/the_epstein_files_ai_generated_podcast\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the answer is clearly yes<\/a>. The Epstein Files, a two-episode-per-day podcast about\u2014what else?\u2014the Epstein files achieved some success on the podcast charts last fall, landing enough subscribers to earn some media attention. The creator, Adam Levy, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/91497873\/epstein-files-ai-podcast-adam-levy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told Fast Company at the time<\/a>, \u201cPeople just want no bullsh*t,\u201d adding, \u201cStrip the emotion, strip the bullsh*t, strip everything away\u2014just tell me things for what they are and when you tell it to me, help me understand the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">In other words, it seems like the audience Levy was counting on was the same one as the audience for NotebookLM\u2014listeners not seeking anyone\u2019s artistic output, but perhaps seeking a form of\u00a0technology that allows them to download information into their brains quickly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">As of this writing, the feed for the Epstein Files <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/breaking-the-complete-trump-epstein-connection-what\/id1874527524?i=1000753860917\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">last updated in March<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">At the time<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/newsletters\/2026-04-30\/-podslop-proliferation-is-challenging-the-audio-industry\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Bloomberg reported on the AI numbers from Podcast Index<\/a>, an astonishing 39% of new podcasts created in the last day were found to be AI generated. As of this writing, it was 35.4%\u2014corresponding to a total of 485 newly created AI-generated podcast feeds in the past day. The single top publisher of podcasts, according to Podcast Index, was Inception Point AI, responsible for 23.6% of total new podcast output.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2024, Google rolled out what was at the time a pretty startling new feature as part of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,2294,74],"class_list":["post-622669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-podcasts","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}