Yesterday I listened to a podcast called Garden featuring Nigel Thistledown, a self-described “garden enthusiast, botanical provocateur and occasional mediator of bird-plant disputes.” The podcast is one of thousands of AI-generated shows being produced by a company called Inception Point whose CEO Jeanine Wright believes 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.” Her soundbite that inspired plenty of outrage online this week was that “people who are still referring to all AI-generated content as AI slop are probably lazy luddites.”
Not wanting to be lazy or a luddite myself, I went to Spotify and listened to one of those podcasts for myself. It was as terrible, robotic and useless as you would expect. Still, I’m not outraged by this company dedicated to flooding platforms with bad content. Actually, I think it could be good news. Everything I have seen about podcast growth and listeners since having my own is that they are routinely discovered through word of mouth and referrals. Hardly anyone is relying on search to find podcasts, and those who have will quickly rethink that choice thanks to companies like Inception Point.
This means that in the future, the only way shows and content will survive is if people actually find it to be useful and good. On that metric, the show I just listened to is an epic fail. As the article about her company notes, the “startup is currently bootstrapped, and employees are not yet salaried, but the company will soon seek outside funding.” When you have no listeners, no quality and offer no value, that funding is pretty unlikely … and grabbing attention with outlandish quotes are really all you have left.