Recently, Google launched the ability to generate a podcast conversation from an article. I was curious if it worked & I tried it out on three recent posts.

The output could fit into any radio show or podcast I’ve listened to. It’s not perfect: there are no intros or outros. But the “hosts” chuckle, ask questions, interplay in human-like ways. The AI even references images in the post.

The Ghost in the Machine : Invisible Ads in Generative Search In this episode, the AI injects a related concept that I don’t mention in the post : native ads. Native ads are ads that are designed to look like the content around them. The core idea of the post - advertisers paying to influence the results of a generative AI search engine - are, in fact, native ads.

Interwoven with Initia : There’s a good dialogue between the AI. They reference a pasted image & the contents of the image - in this case a schematic of the Initia stack. There are some inaccuracies : the AI references TVL (total value locked) as cash, which isn’t exactly right in this case, but it’s close.

The 3 Attributes of an Attractive Market for AI : In this one, the characters flip the role of the authority. In the other two, the male voice is the authority. In this one, the female voice explains some of the key concepts.

I could imagine a very near future where readers machine generate podcasts for themselves or publishers produce these at scale.

Would you listen to a machine-generated podcast of some of these posts? Let me know by messaging me on Twitter, replying to this email, or on LinkedIn.