My podcast circles have been a-buzz with last week’s announcement from former Wondery executives about a new AI podcast venture that will generate thousands of podcasts, and thousands of fake creator avatars, for as little as $1 an episode:
Inception Point AI is attempting to do just that, as the company builds a stable of AI talent to host podcasts, and eventually become broader influencers across social media, literature and more. Amid the high costs for producing narrative podcasts and pricy, short-term contracts for popular hosts, the idea here is being able to own, scale and control the talent (unlike those off-the-cuff humans) and produce shows at a minimal cost.
“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,” said CEO Jeanine Wright, who was previously chief operating officer of podcasting company Wondery, which has recently had to reorganize under the changing podcast landscape.
The company is able to produce each episode for $1 or less, depending on length and complexity, and attach programmatic advertising to it. This generally means that if about 20 people listen to that episode, the company made a profit on that episode, without factoring in overhead.
Inception Point AI already has more than 5,000 shows across its Quiet Please Podcast Network and produces more than 3,000 episodes a week. Collectively, the network has seen 10 million downloads since September 2023. It takes about an hour to create an episode, from coming up with the idea to getting it out in the world.
The reaction has mostly been appalled horror. I talk a little about AI-generated podcasts in my latest episode, so you can probably guess my opinion. I haven’t had time yet to properly process and respond reflectively with an educated take, but other people have. I share here an excerpt from an article written by David Hoffman for PodNews that does a nice job summarizing my own thoughts at the moment:
People don’t listen to podcasts because they need to fill a block of time with sound, and any sound will do. They listen because they want to be educated, entertained, or inspired in a way that can only come from the connection of human minds at a distance. This is the ultimate purpose of all media, and all art. Someone thinks a thought, then expresses that thought as well and beautifully as they are able, then someone else in a different place, in a different time, can experience that thought, and let it create new thoughts inside of them that they in turn can work to express.
Even when an advertisement is attached, or when they know that they are consuming branded content, people tolerate the promotion because they crave the connection. Your phone, in the end, is what the radio and the television are – a remedy for loneliness. They are ways to bring new people – interesting people that you enjoy spending time with – into your life and your home. Nothing is lonelier than realizing those people were not people after all, or even worse, just more pieces of software that exist only to feed you advertising. Without being driven by human expression, anything produced is a medium without a message, an empty pizza box in place of a meal. You have successfully delivered something of the correct size and shape, but no nourishment can be taken from it.
And what happens to a medium when people have a hard time finding value in it? The audience vanishes. Despite the best assurances of every AI content creation startup, people will not continue to consume any pieces of media you shove at them. You can score some very short-term wins by flooding the market with garbage — people will watch or listen to low-quality things once or twice because they stumble upon them, but they will not keep returning. To build an audience and hold it you must consider their needs and provide them with something truly worthwhile. The joy of a podcast is in listening to a human voice, and hearing what it has to say. Remove that, and there’s nothing left.
I encourage you to read the full article, and maybe find some hope in it. My hope is that those of us who are humans creating human stories from our human imaginations will endure until this bubble bursts. The model they’re using reminds me of resource extraction– mining and oil companies come in, strip the landscape bare, destroy people and nature, get as much money as they can, and then move on to the next site. There is no care for anyone or anything except personal profit.
But, as podcaster Christine Caccipuoti (of Footnoting History)pointed out to me, even when the bubble pops and the content generation slows, there will still be a mess of AI generated content drowning out the human generated content. Those seeking fast cash will move on to the next big thing, but leave a mess behind. How will we as creators, whether industry or independent, deal with this? How do we clean the mess up and re-centre human content? How do we get back to– or rather, reinvent, that punk rock aspect of podcasting?
I don’t know the answer to this, but I do know that our friends in the print world are dealing a similar issue. 404Media reported today that librarians are being asked by patrons to find AI-hallucinated books:
As much as library workers try to shield their institutions from the AI-generated content onslaught, the situation is and has been, in many ways, inevitable. Companies desperate to rush generative AI products to market are pushing flawed products onto the public that are predictably being used to pollute our information ecosystems. The consequences are that AI slop is entering libraries, everyone who uses AI products bears at least a little responsibility for the swarm, and every library worker, regardless of role, is being asked to try and mitigate the effects.
Collection development librarians are requesting digital book vendors like OverDrive, Hoopla and CloudLibrary to remove AI slop titles as they’re found. Subject specialists are expected to vet patron requested titles that may have been written in part with AI without having to read every single title. Library technology providers are rushing to implement tools that librarians say are making library systems catalogs harder to use.
I’m hopeful that watching how libraries respond will give us some ideas, but they also have stronger organizational structures that they can leverage. Podcasting’s biggest strength– there are no gatekeepers– is also going to be our biggest challenge. Do we wait for industry giants like Apple and Spotify and YouTube to remove AI generated content? I’m doubtful that will happen; there’s profit for them to make still. Do we look back to the early days of blogging, with blog circles and blog rolls and DIY our own distribution channels that challenge the AI flood?
I am hopeful the AI bubble will burst. I have no concrete evidence or proof it will, but I did live through the dot come bubble of the 90s and there is a certain vibe to the whole AI conversation happening now that reminds me very much of that time.
What do you think? If we human creators keep creating our human-centred content, how do we rise above the tide of AI slop to be seen and to connect with other humans?
Sources and further reading:
PodNews. “The Podcast Factory Making 3,000 Episodes A Week.” 10 September 2025.
David Hoffman. “The Battle Cry of the Lazy Luddite.” PodNews. 16 September 2025.
Benjamin Lorch. 2025. “The Power of Punk Rock Podcasting.” Hindenburg.
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