It seems that Artificial intelligence (AI) is exploding this year, or at least about to exponentially change every little aspect of our lives in the very near future. Podcasting is no exception, and we see more and more AI tools around it. From generating show notes or transcripts to editing audio, AI tools are becoming increasingly popular, affordable and easy to use.
This made us wonder, can AI take over the entire podcasting process? Is it possible to create a full podcast (with multiple episodes) using only AI, without any human recording? (and without telling the difference)
In this article, we’ll explore the current state of AI podcast generators, and discuss whether it’s possible to produce a full podcast using AI alone. Let’s dive in!
The Rise of AI (in Podcasting)
AI tools have made significant strides in recent years, and many new podcast AI tools in podcasting are becoming available. Those are also getting much more accessible – you don’t need to run models locally and hack a python script that automates things – it’s all almost as easy to use as your good old Spotify app on your phone. Compute costs are also getting down with improved models and technology. If it used to cost a few dollars to transcribe an episode with AI in the past, it can go down to cents these days.
How AI is currently being used in podcasting:
- Content Generation: You can use AI to generate new episode topics & ideas, show notes, titles, copy for your podcast website and more. This can be a huge time-saver for podcasters, since you already recorded the audio and AI can generate a bunch of info based on that.
We actually even built a quick Podcast Name Generator tool based on AI to help you find good podcast names,
- Audio Editing: AI-powered editing tools like Descript can automatically remove background noise, normalize audio levels, and even perform more complex editing tasks. This can significantly reduce the time and effort required for post-production. Some tools can even let you alter the actual audio content or change words mid-sentence.
- Transcription: AI can quickly and quite accurately transcribe audio into text, making podcasts more accessible to a wider audience. It’s great for accessibility and podcast SEO.
- Artwork / Thumbnails: Another obvious choice – you can easily create episode artwork or podcast logos with AI. If you have some sort of template that changes every episode – this can also be used to automate things a little.
- Clips & Subtitles: If you have a video podcast, you can use AI to automatically add subtitles to the video based on the audio. Gone are the days of syncing subtitles manually (phew!)
Also – generating short-form video clips with snippets from your episodes can be great for posting on social media.
Can AI Record a Full Podcast Without Human Input?
While it’s obvious that AI has improved significantly in the past year or so, the idea of a fully AI-generated podcast is still in its early stages. Let’s look into two current options and then cover the challenges (and opportunities) of the current state of AI podcast generators –
Google NotebookLM
Google’s NotebookLM tool was released in September 2024. It’s an AI tool geared for research and organization of documents and data, but you can also easily generate podcasts with it!
The really cool part here is that you can gather a ton of relevant content (and context), and ask it to summarize it accurately with a short audio episode. It’s surprisingly good and sounds pretty real as well.
It’s probably not 100% oriented towards podcasters and podcasting, but you can definitely find a way around it and make it work.
ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs is an “AI Audio Platform” that offers text-to-speech services based strictly on AI. You can use it for many different use-cases like voice over, dubbing, voice cloning and so on, but yes – also for podcasting!
Their voice generator offers multiple voice “actors”, and you can easily just provide a script and generate a full podcast episode. It sounds great, and the AI generated podcasts really do feel real for a moment – but you can probably still tell there’s no human behind the mic. (surely this would improve in the near future, both at ElevenLabs but also all over)
Challenges – AI Podcast Generator
After testing several tools, we’re super excited for the future capabilities of AI. It feels that it’s getting there, even though the current state and capabilities don’t really sound 100% authentic.
We know – these issues may all go away in just a few months or years, but the current technology is still not fully there.
Podcasting does have a wide variety of formats – you can do interviews, audio dramas, self-help, news & informational, Q&A, technical conversations and a lot more. AI generated podcasts can work very well for one format but not the other, so keep that in mind as well.
Current challenges with AI podcast generators:
- Behind the Mic: On most podcasts, there’s some level of connection between the host and the listener. Sure, you might not know the host in person, but perhaps the host (or guest) is someone you look up to, or someone you follow on social media. This factor is (currently) almost irreplaceable by AI, unless it really becomes the standard. (interestingly enough – this might be a better option for Audio Books rather than podcasts)
- Authenticity and Emotion: AI-generated voices do still sound a little robotic and lack natural nuances and emotions that make human voices engaging. We feel it still struggles to replicate the full range of human expression so it might just get a little boring or too obvious over time.
- Creativity: Can an AI generated podcast go off-script? find good jokes or remarks during a show, or even laugh for a few moments? There are many question marks that still make podcasts more human these days, and those would become a little difficult for AI to fully replicate.
- Real-life experiences: On many podcasts, the hosts/guest would tell stories from their daily lives, workplaces, encounters and so on. Sure, an AI podcast generator can “tell” those for you if you have it scripted, but that’s yet another hurdle to overcome.
Conclusion – AI Podcast Generators
AI tools are currently best used to enhance and improve your podcasting process, but perhaps not replace it entirely just yet. They can already help podcasters save a ton of time but the core of a great podcast still lies in human creativity, authenticity, and connection.
All that being said, remember that things change really, really fast these days with AI. New models and LLMs are dropping on a weekly basis, and people across all industries are releasing dedicated niche tools that leverage AI for more specific tasks.
We hope to be able to keep this article up to date with new developments and tools that can help podcasters generate full episodes based on AI. We feel it’s currently not ready to replace human hosts (just our humble opinion), but it can definitely get there quite fast.
If you’re looking to start your own podcast, remember that the most important thing is to create content that is authentic, engaging, and valuable to your audience. Quality content is more important than anything else in today’s world, so even if you can generate 2,000 episodes in 2 days by using AI it may actually just not get enough traction.
And as always, a great podcast deserves a great website, so make sure to check out Beamly.com to launch a full website for your podcast.
