When two AI voices try really hard to mimic your favorite podcast. It started with Google’s NotebookLM. Now it’s everywhere. Reissmann, Ole (2025): Rise of the Fakecast: The Uncanny Valley of AI-Generated Podcasts
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An editor gets a promising pitch, starts googling, and finds a byline that exists everywhere and nowhere. A podcast episode about a scammer – and that some sources didn’t care about being faked. (Question Everything)
Former Wondery exec Jeanine Wright launches Inception Point AI, flooding the zone with 5,000 AI-generated podcasts at $1 per episode. Her take: calling AI content “slop” makes you a “lazy luddite.” Sure. When your business model requires only 50 listeners per episode to turn a profit, maybe the bar isn’t exactly set at Pulitzer Prize level. (Caitlin Huston, Hollywood Reporter)
Rise of the Fakecast: The Uncanny Valley of AI-Generated Podcasts
Research question: Given a newsletter and three articles mentioned therein, can AI make a passable podcast fakecast? Time constraint: 60 minutes Setup: Claude 4 Opus, Gemini 2.5 Text-to-Speech Result: 14-minute podcast Is it any good? At first, it seems impressive. I like how the different sources get incorporated, with the speakers looping back to arguments...
Google is turning search results into podcasts
One click, and you’ve got two AI voices having what sounds like the world's most scripted coffee shop conversation about whatever you just Googled. It’s called Audio Overviews and works like the feature in NotebookLM, powered by Gemini's text-to-speech. As usual, it’s only live in Search Labs in the US for now. And weirdly, it's...
AI & Journalism Podcasts That Don’t Suck (I Promise)
Here are my artificial intelligence and journalism podcast recommendations, based on actual listening. Explained: The conspiracy to make AI seem harder than it is! by Spotify's Gustav Söderström. For anyone looking for a good introduction — not a series, no storytelling, just 1.5 hours of solid explanation: This is the podcast you want. It's from...
