AI is for many a double-edged sword. As AI systems advance, new, powerful tools are appearing all the time. At this writing, AI can turn documents into realistic podcast conversations with a few clicks, while automated transcription and analytics are streamlining production workflows. AI can make studio-quality recordings without expensive gear, and AI editing tools let you cut, copy and paste your audio like a text document – making editing incredibly easy. Manual transcription work, once the bane of anyone in audio, has become automated and its accuracy is improving rapidly.
But there are serious concerns with the rise of AI in the audio world. When people can generate podcasts from Wikipedia pages and CVs, there are fears that there will be a flood of synthetic content lacking the human perspective. Will AI replace human podcast hosts and drain what makes podcasting special? As AI advances make it harder to differentiate between conversations between people and between algorithms, what will change about what people value in audio content? There are big questions on the horizon.