Tuesday 26th September: Beep boop, robot podcasters are coming

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Get over your initial skepticism over that headline and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find some more skepticism beyond. The tech behind recreating a podcaster’s voice and translating it into another language is very impressive and honestly the idea behind it isn’t bad at all - it’s a very solid way to reach new audiences and will allow non-English language speaking creators to tell their stories to a wider audience as well.

But there’s a catch, as there always is with new tech. There are going to be the usual issues about using podcasters’ voices to train an AI, and issues with privacy are going to be raised relentlessly. As a result OpenAI says it’s intentionally limiting how widely this tool will be available due to concerns around safety and privacy.

Beyond that, to what extent are the replicated voices actual replacements for that one-to-one relationship audiences have with podcast creators. That relationship was the reason the medium was able to grow to maturity, and adding a level of artificiality to it seems to fly in the face of it. Ultimately it will come down to how sophisticated and effective the tech is.

In a recent post on our community forum Peter asked if he was the only one still watching the news. Well, at least according to this… pretty much. In the US linear broadcasters are effectively daycares for the over 60s while younger audiences have fled for the greener (or at least more immediately accessible) pastures of streaming services.

If, like me, you tried your best to forget about Richard Sharp and his torrid ties to the Tories, well, bad luck. The good news is that, in order to prevent another Sharp situation, the BBC is asking candidates to provide not only “interests that might be relevant to the work of the BBC” but also ones that “could lead to a real or perceived conflict of interest”.

You might be looking at that headline and thinking “aren’t all media companies 'made-for-audiences’?” Well, here’s the thing — there are websites that are in fact just made for advertising. With the advent of AI there will be countless more sites created using generative AI for the sole purpose of attracting revenue. This is a look at how to signal that your site isn’t one of those.

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