NPR’s Planet Money podcast has just concluded a three part series where they used generative AI to write an episode for them.
In Part 1 of this series, we taught AI how to write an original Planet Money script by feeding it real research and interviews. In Part 2, we used AI to clone the voice of our former colleague Robert Smith.
Now, we’ve put everything together into a 15-minute Planet Money episode.
I didn’t find the simulated Robert Smith voice to be particularly convincing but that might be because I have so much experience listening to the real Robert Smith. I think AI generated voices are already good enough to tackle many lower stakes applications but pacing and inflection are just too important to podcasting and we are just not quite there yet.
In terms of content, I thought the episode was, at times, slightly nonsensical and bland but overall totally passable. If I wasn’t primed in advance to expect AI content, there is a chance I wouldn’t have noticed.
I don’t think I would feel particularly good about spending too much of my time listening to wholly AI generated podcasts but I think it is somewhat inevitable once the voice simulation technology improves.
It would be fascinating to see the Planet Money team revisit this experiment in a few years.