I attended the London Podcast Show in May 2024 to meet other industry folk and catch up on the gossip. There were a couple of notable guests and some interesting talks. I took notes, snapped photos, nodded along.
Until one presentation shocked me to a point I can only describe as ‘disgust’.
James Cridland, one of the biggest names in British podcasting, gave his audience a demo of a 100% AI-generated podcast.
Scripted by ChatGPT, with a voice constructed on Benztown and cover art designed by Midjourney, with 45 minutes of effort, he was able to give us Ricky Gervais analysing the Spanish Football League, complete with a Gervais-sounding voice attempting to pronounce Spanish surnames. All this without the permission of Ricky Gervais (or the Spanish Football League).
It threw me at the time, but now the part that lingers in my mind is that the whole process took 45 minutes. In the 15 months since that demo debuted, I can only imagine that time has halved. You could probably also do most of that work with one AI tool, not three.
AI is changing the shape of the podcasting industry. AI voices sharing AI-generated content are a thing of the present, not the near future.
AI can create a podcast for your audience on the topic they care about the most at that moment, with adverts that perfectly match their interests and desires.
So why should they still listen to your podcast?
Being a good podcast isn’t enough any more.
And the more content you create for your podcast, the more material you’re giving AI platforms to feed on without your consent.
If you want your podcast to be the island that survives the AI podcast tidal wave, you need to offer something that AI can’t: an authentic, human experience. A conversation, not a monologue.
If you want to win your listeners over, to become a permanent fixture in their mental landscape and to have them as part of yours, you need to create a community in which they can participate.
Because once they know that not only do you solve their problems, but you’ve made a space for people on this same problem-solving journey to connect, you’ve given them something irreplaceable: a sense of belonging.
That community could be a social media account or a gated community with access to premium content.
It could be your private email address and the way you respond to every listener.
It could be an invite-only online event where your audience gets to share their thoughts with you.
It could be the questions you answer in your podcast episode and the replies that audience members give to last episode’s questions.
It could be an email list with segmentations so you can target different listener groups at different stages of their journey, with thoughtful personalisations and effective campaigns.
Community takes many forms, but all of them are human-first. People connecting with people, not AI-recreations of people.
The podcasting landscape will look very different in a few years. The technology is already here and we’re just working out how to use it.
Some will use it to speed up production and increase personalisation. Some may use it to clone your voice from your existing episodes and set up a rival podcast.
But they’ll never be able to clone your community.
Start building yours today.
From one human to another,
~Sarah at CopyHop~
I'm Sarah Hopkinson and I write meaningful emails that help podcasters increase their revenue and build a community around their podcast.
Do you want emails like this for your listeners too?
Book an exploratory call with me to get an email plan for your podcast.
Did a friend forward you this email? Sweet! Subscribe to On The Same Wavelength here to get these emails sent straight to your inbox
