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The online podcast recording platform Riverside<\/a> came out with its own version of a year-end review like Spotify\u2019s \u201cWrapped<\/a>.\u201d The recap, called \u201cRewind,\u201d creates three custom videos for podcasters.<\/p>\n Instead of sharing statistics like how many minutes you recorded, or how many episodes you made, Riverside created a fifteen-second collage of laughter, showing a quick succession of clips in which my podcast co-host and I make each other crack up. The next video is similar, except that it\u2019s a supercut of us saying \u201cumm\u201d over and over.<\/p>\n Then, Riverside scans its AI-generated transcripts of your recordings to find what single word you said more than any other (we\u2019re assuming they cut out words like \u201cand\u201d or \u201cthe\u201d).<\/p>\n It\u2019s a bit ironic, but on my podcast about internet culture<\/a>, my co-host and I said \u201cbook\u201d more often than any other word (this was probably skewed by our subscriber-only \u201cbook club\u201d recordings\u2026 or the fact that my co-host has a book coming out, which we plug incessantly<\/a>). <\/p>\n Another show on our podcast network, Spirits<\/a>, said \u201cAmanda\u201d more often than any other word (not because they\u2019re obsessed with me, but because they also have a host named Amanda).<\/p>\n In the podcast network\u2019s Slack, we exchanged our Rewind videos. There\u2019s something inherently funny about a video of people saying \u201cumm\u201d over and over. But we also know what these videos represent: our creative tools are becoming more saturated with AI features, many of which we do not want or need. The Riverside Rewind points to the uselessness of these tools themselves \u2014 why would I need a video of my co-host and I saying the word \u201cbook\u201d over and over? It\u2019s good for a quick laugh, but there\u2019s no substance.<\/p>\n Though I enjoyed Riverside\u2019s AI recap, its arrival comes at a time when my industry peers are losing opportunities to create, edit, and produce new podcasts, thanks to the same AI tools that generated our Rewind videos. But while AI allows us to automate away some tasks \u2014 like editing out our \u201cumms\u201d and dead air \u2014 podcasting itself is not that mechanical. <\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> AI can quickly generate a transcript of my podcast, which is important for accessibility reasons, helping to automate an activity that used to be incredibly time-consuming and tedious. However, AI is not able to make editorial choices around how to maneuver audio or video to tell a story effectively. Unlike the human editors I work with, AI cannot determine when a tangential conversation in a podcast is funny and when it should be cut because it\u2019s boring.<\/p>\n Despite the rise of personalized AI audio tools, like Google\u2019s NotebookLM, its ability to serve as a creation tool has also seen high-profile failures, as of late. <\/p>\n Last week, The Washington Post started to roll out personalized, AI-generated podcasts about the news of the day. <\/p>\n You can see why this would seem like a \u201cgood\u201d idea to profit-hungry execs \u2014 instead of paying a team to do the intensive work of researching, recording, editing, and distributing a daily show, you could automate it \u2014 except you can\u2019t. <\/p>\n The podcasts spouted made-up quotes<\/a> and factual errors, which is existentially dangerous for a news organization. According to Semafor, the Post\u2019s internal testing found that between 68% and 84% <\/a>of the AI podcasts failed to meet the publication\u2019s standards. This seems like a fundamental misinterpretation of how LLMs work. You can\u2019t train an LLM to distinguish reality from fiction because it\u2019s designed to provide the most statistically probable output to a prompt, which is not always the most truthful output \u2014 especially in breaking news.<\/p>\n Riverside did a great job making a fun end-of-year product, but it\u2019s also a reminder. AI is infiltrating every industry, including podcasting. But in this moment of the \u201cAI boom,\u201d as companies tinker with new technology, we need to be able to distinguish between when AI serves us, and when it\u2019s fodder for useless slop<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n