AI Podcasts Flood Platforms as 39% of New Feeds Turn Out to Be Synthetic Audio Content

It's not just music, AI is threating to overtake human podcasters, too.

Bloomberg recently reported that 39 percent of podcasts over a nine-day period were likely AI-generated, according to data from Podcast Index. Inception Point AI is at the forefront, reportedly publishing 3,000 episodes a week, flooding podcasting apps with low-quality trash. According to Bloomberg: And the Inception Point team isn't the only one who's executing on this type of strategy. In the past nine days or so, 10,871 new podcast feeds have been created; approximately 4,243, or 39%, might have been AI-generated, according to the Podcast Index, an open-source platform that tracks the ecosystem.

More Than a Third of All New Podcasts Are AI-Generated

In 2024, Google rolled out what was at the time a pretty startling new feature as part of its NotebookLM AI suite: audio digests of information that were essentially podcasts, sometimes featuring oddly familiar sounding synthetic voices. It was a whole new implementation of generative AI. But it's not new anymore, and AI proliferation moves pretty fast, so today, AI-generated podcasts account for no less than a third of new podcast feeds, according to the New Feeds Report at an open-sourced site called Podcast Index. Picture what this means: an unknowably massive, apparently endless flood of synthetic chatter about every topic on Earth, bursting forth all the time like when they open those discharge outlets on the Three Gorges Dam. And for what audience? It’s not abundantly clear yet. The bizarre bluster from leadership at the companies that make these podcasts seems to be targeted at investors, not would-be listeners. For instance, in September of last year, Jeanine Wright, the CEO of an AI podcasting company called Inception Point AI told the Hollywood Reporter, “We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life.†Following the “Content†link at the top of the Inception Point AI website takes you to a page of podcasts. One of the ones in the top row as of this writing is called “Definition of Literally,†a podcast about the definition of the word literally. The episode I sampled was five minutes long, but starts with an ad. Inception Point AI did not return Gizmodo's request for comment on Saturday. We will update this article if we receive a statement. At the time of the Hollywood Reporter's story, Inception Point AI said it was responsible for 5,000 total shows, and said it churned out 3,000 episodes per week. According to Bloomberg, it now has 10,000 active shows, though its output was quoted at 877 new episodes in 48 hoursâ€"so still around 3,000 per week. Does anyone actually listen to AI-generated podcasts? To some degree the answer is clearly yes. The Epstein Files, a two-episode-per-day podcast aboutâ€"what else?â€"the Epstein files achieved some success on the podcast charts last fall, landing enough subscribers to earn some media attention. The creator, Adam Levy, told Fast Company at the time, “People just want no bullsh*t,†adding, “Strip the emotion, strip the bullsh*t, strip everything awayâ€"just tell me things for what they are and when you tell it to me, help me understand the facts.†In other words, it seems like the audience Levy was counting on was the same one as the audience for NotebookLMâ€"listeners not seeking anyone's artistic output, but perhaps seeking a form of technology that allows them to download information into their brains quickly. As of this writing, the feed for the Epstein Files last updated in March. At the time Bloomberg reported on the AI numbers from Podcast Index, an astonishing 39% of new podcasts created in the last day were found to be AI generated. As of this writing, it was 35.4%â€"corresponding to a total of 485 newly created AI-generated podcast feeds in the past day. The single top publisher of podcasts, according to Podcast Index, was Inception Point AI, responsible for 23.6% of total new podcast output.

Approaching Half of New Podcasts Appear to Be AI Slop

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Approaching half of new podcasts appear to be AI slop. Of the 10,871 new podcast feeds created in the past nine days, 4,243 of them, or 39 percent, have signs of being AI-generated, data from the Podcast Index cited by Bloomberg last week showed. "It's absurd," Dave Jones, who runs the Podcast Index, said on his own show last week, per the outlet. Podcasts, before the intrusion of AI, were already a sloppy medium. They're designed to be listened to for hours on end while you zone out during chores, replacing your own scary thoughts with the babbling of someone else's. Crucially, they're inexpensive to produce and the bar for entry is pretty much zero. All that makes the form perfect for being imitated by AI models. AI chatbots can effortlessly churn out lengthy scripts, and AI voice synthesizers can sound eerily humanlike, especially if you aren't listening closely (as is wont to happen with a podcast). It's no wonder then that companies like Inception Point claimed last year to be churning out 3,000 episodes per week across 5,000 shows it made using AI, purportedly costing just $1 per episode. Its cofounder Jeanine Wright bragged to Bloomberg that the company now had more than 10,000 active shows, more than 2,500 of them made in the last three weeks. A reporter for The Telegraph found that they were about as mind-numbingly vapid as you'd expect. One show was simply called "Lawn," featuring a monotonous AI host that spoke mostly in cliches while telling little useful information about lawns. The most interesting thing about the podcasts, in fact, was the AI's frequent errors, such as casually referring to characters who were never mentioned before and never mentioned again, and even speaking in complete gibberish. How many people are actually listening to this AI-generated dreck? It's hard to imagine that listeners who stumble on an AI-generated show don't either catch on to the charade and leave, or get bored and move on without ever realizing the host wasn't human. Companies like Inception Point would probably prefer not to let us know. But at the sheer scale these episodes are being mass produced, there's clear potential to make money from advertising and clicks -- so who cares if they don't attract a loyal fanbase? Some podcast hosting services are cracking down. RSS.com doesn't allow new shows to play its programmatic ads unless they subscribe to its service and have at least ten listeners in the past month, according to Bloomberg. If a podcast is determined to be "slop," the ads are pulled, and the show either gets permanently demonetized or removed from the platform. "Bootstrapped companies like ours are made of people, and the people who built RSS.com truly care about podcasting and real podcasters," Alberto Betella, cofounder of RSS.com, told Bloomberg. "Deliberately leaving slop would hurt the ecosystem and also the reputation of our business. If we miss something, it's a scale problem, not a policy one." The podcast sloplords disagree -- and also really hate the word "slop." "The people still talking about slop are still making 6-7 jokes," Wright, the Inception Point cofounder, told Bloomberg. "It's still yesterday's conversation." Okay, grandma.

Think music is the worst hit by slop? AI has deeply polluted podcasts, as well

AI podcasts are turning audio platforms into slop factories AI slop has already flooded video feeds, gaming debates, software code, and search results. Now the same low-effort machine-made content is moving into podcasts. Music usually dominates the AI slop debate, but the podcast problem may be harder to spot and harder to clean up. AI tools can now create, upload, and even monetize entire shows far faster than traditional podcast studios. ' Is podcasting becoming the next slop factory? A Bloomberg report points to how quickly this is spreading. According to the Podcast Index, 10,871 new podcast feeds were created over roughly nine days, and about 4,243 of them, or 39%, were likely AI-generated. One AI podcast startup now says it has more than 10,000 active shows and published 877 new shows in only 48 hours. Recommended Videos Podcasting becomes especially vulnerable at that scale because discovery works differently from music. A low-quality AI song can be skipped in seconds, but podcasts rely heavily on search, recommendations, and trust. If feeds are filled with machine-made shows, listeners may have to work harder to find real hosts, original reporting, or actual conversations. That pattern is already visible across other AI-hit formats. Video platforms are trying to deal with low-quality AI uploads while also promoting AI tools for creators. Gaming has seen backlash over AI-assisted visuals, with some players calling certain AI graphics features slop. Coding has a similar issue too. AI can help developers write more code faster, but that also means more bugs, weak fixes, security risks, and extra review work. In podcasts, the concern is not just volume, but also how easily that volume can be turned into money. Who benefits when podcasts become automated? Easy monetization is what makes podslop more than just a quality problem. Some hosting services allow free podcasts to join ad marketplaces with very few checks, so AI-made shows can still earn money from downloads even if the content is thin or barely reviewed. One platform shares 60% of ad revenue with creators, while another says it can pause ads or remove shows if they are found to be slop. Apple Podcasts has at least started asking creators to disclose when a material part of a show uses AI. Spotify, on the other hand, relies on broader rules against misleading content and has not released a specific AI podcast policy yet. This leaves listeners and advertisers with a trust problem because AI has made audio easier to produce and harder to verify.