AI-generated podcasts now account for 39% of new feeds, threatening human podcasters

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.