The Audio Industry Is Grappling With the Rise of 'Podslop'
- Reference: 0183122772
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/04/1651204/the-audio-industry-is-grappling-with-the-rise-of-podslop
- Source link:
> Welcome to the modern era of podcasting in which thousands of new shows are released into the world every day [1]with a sizable portion likely being AI-generated . Figuring out exactly which ones fall into that growing category is becoming more difficult just as the industry is starting to take this issue seriously. In only the past month or so, Amazon launched a feature that explains a product by generating a quasi-podcast, complete with co-hosts talking to each other and taking questions from users. Shout out to Business Insider reporter Katie Notopoulos for [2]spotting this (and, naturally, demoing it with an adult diaper rash-cream). Not long ago, Nicholas Thompson, chief executive officer of the Atlantic, [3]noted "podslop" dominated his Spotify search results when he typed in the word "Sora." This was around the time that OpenAI shut down its user-generated, AI-content-only app.
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> [...] All of which raises some big, difficult questions. For one, what should the listening platforms do about this incursion? As of right now, Apple Podcasts [4]requires creators who generated a "material portion" of their show using AI to disclose it. The platform also bans misleading or deceptive content. Spotify hasn't published any specific guidelines around AI, though it maintains [5]general rules around dangerous and misleading content. Where this conversation gets even trickier is when it comes to money. Many of these podcasts are hosted on at least one free service that allows programs to opt into their ad marketplace with zero barrier to entry, meaning these shows (and the hosting service) profit off every listen or download. Spreaker, a company owned by iHeartMedia, is the primary one to watch here. Though it tells users to disclose when they rely on AI, it still allows those shows to opt into its programmatic ad marketplace, which pays creators 60% of the revenue generated by the ads placed in their shows. It stands to reason that most of these thousands of shows don't reach many people. But in the aggregate, the ears and dollars could add up. Are the advertisers on board with being next to AI-generated content, some of which might be deemed "slop?"
There's also the question of how to define "slop." Jackson of the Podcast Index and his co-host Adam Curry treat it as something listeners simply know when they hear it, while Alberto Betella, co-founder of RSS.com, defines it as "fully automated content with no human review."
Jeanine Wright, co-founder of Inception Point, rejects the debate altogether: "The people still talking about slop are still making 6-7 jokes," she said. "It's still yesterday's conversation."
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-04-30/-podslop-proliferation-is-challenging-the-audio-industry
[2] https://x.com/katienotopoulos/status/2049549142150598798?s=20
[3] https://www.threads.com/@nxthompson/post/DWTouBFEbTK?xmt=AQF09Twy5qN38aDXJDDaj1_TibjBg3SJ959imdowvohqZQ
[4] https://podcasters.apple.com/support/891-content-and-subscription-guidelines
[5] https://www.spotify.com/us/safetyandprivacy/platform-rules
The answer is simple (Score:5, Interesting)
All AI content should be accurately labeled as AI and credit given to the model used
You're Right, It Looks Like I've Murdered You! (Score:5, Funny)
Just last week I listened to a true-crime podcast where they described how a murderer tortured their victim by asking them how many r's in "strawberry", and cutting off a finger for each incorrect answer. Eventually they cut off all fourteen!
Re: (Score:2)
For TrueAI(tm), it must fail to spot the climax and just keep ramblin' along.
this why I do not subscribe to any AUDIO ONLY.... (Score:2)
Too Much Slop, too little content. Simple ways to tell:
1) the same AI Audio voice (slop)
2) Podcasts that stop. At the end of each sentence. Repeatedly.
3) A single pronunciation mistake (such as reading street names or other locations, wrong)
4) Stolen content, VERY easy to tell.
What happens? Note the 'caster' and block anything from them forever. Got a nice list going.
YouTube Too (Score:5, Insightful)
The same thing is occurring in YouTube too. Someone posts a video with a clickbait title. It's an AI voice reading an AI script showing video that's only tangentially related to the script. Overall, the video isn't outright bad. But, it's not particularly good either. They're just poor quality. They all just seem to ramble on for a pre-determined amount of time and then stop.
The problem is that the shear number of these videos and channels is unreal. Someone's automated the creation of these channels and videos. This someone is pumping out these videos faster than you can block whole channels.
Further, it's impossible to tell which channel has human-generated content and which is all-AI. YouTube doesn't help at all since Google is promoting the usage of AI. So, the service is getting flooded with poor-quality AI content. As a YouTube user, you either deal with this AI enshittification or you stop using YouTube.
Re: YouTube Too (Score:2)
The thing that's really pissing me off about a lot of videos on youtube now is the subtitles that are part of the video and cant be switched off. Why TF people do them beats the hell out of me.
Re: (Score:2)
I assume AI is a part of everyone's workflow now, but if I can't see the human involved, then I assume AI *is* the workflow. I'm sure that won't be enough eventually. But for now, it keeps me away from those channels that shit out 15 feature-length documentaries a month.
Industrialized Content Subsumes Industries (Score:4, Interesting)
Industrializing content creation was bound to eventually come up with a way to industrialize their own industry. Creators annoyed the business side of the content creation business and always have. Whether it be music and real musicians, books and real authors, videos and real videographers (and writers, and lighting experts and all the rest), or audio form news / stories and all the producers required to make them well, including the researchers helping gather the information behind the scenes, all the humans involved have always been seen as a cost center, and an obstacle to pure, unfiltered profit possibilities. Now that AI is good enough to generate slop in all of these realms, the industrialized version of all of these realms are of course obsessing over how quickly they can rid themselves of the human involvement in creating any of these forms of content.
This obsession has led very quickly to creating so much automated content that it's beginning to swamp traditional content creators, who simply will not be able to keep up with the automated creation.
And perhaps in the end, the "industrial" part of the content creation industries will falter and fail under the flood of slop that they are creating. And maybe we can get back to a point where the content itself becomes important again, rather than the quantity of slop that can be generated for clicks. At least, that's what the tiny little hopeful part of my brain is wishing for. More likely, we'll just watch traditional and even modern distribution methods for content choke on the tsunami of slop until there's no distribution methods left, and we'll be back to passing things around on tapes, cds, or notebooks.
Re: (Score:2)
Vinyl is making a comeback, man! Again! The podcast content is not important. Neither is 90% of the music out there. It's the 10% or 1% of music that makes people feel something that matters.
I'm really surprised the platforms (spotify etc) haven't collapsed due to the chaos. If LLM based agents became efficient at agency, there'd be a real big problem. With OpenClaw and things like that, it's a real problem. If someone makes that infinite loop actually efficient at getting things done, whoopsies. I don't kn
Nice feedback loop! (Score:4, Interesting)
They'll have to use AI to figure out which ones are AI.
IT'S ALL AI, ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM!!!!
Re: (Score:2)
It's artificial pseudo-intelligent turtles all the way down!
Re: (Score:2)
but DO they have their audience?
or maybe this is gaming the system on two sides: the company puts out AI slop on the channels, and then creates hundreds of fake accounts and downloaders and streamers to make it seem like the thing is the bees knees, none of which have ad-blocking on , so it just rakes in the ad-view count?
Re: (Score:2)
> or maybe this is gaming the system on two sides: the company puts out AI slop on the channels, and then creates hundreds of fake accounts and downloaders and streamers to make it seem like the thing is the bees knees, none of which have ad-blocking on , so it just rakes in the ad-view count?
This arms race is as old as ads on the internet. I remember stories in the 90s about click farms staffed with real humans n developing countries.
Slop? (Score:2)
If it's informative and/or entertaining, is it slop? And, really, given the human-generated slop already in this space what are we supposed to be labeling?
Disconnect. (Score:2)
We might be witnessing the thing that facilitats the most healthy transition we've had in a couple of decades - disconnection. When the signal to noise ratio degrades sufficiently we may choose to walk away with far less reticence then perhaps we would have experienced just a few years ago.
Re: (Score:3)
I think a lot of people already did that with social media. Really, any time I start connecting with other people through platforms, I end up losing interest in whatever creative pursuit brought me there in the first place. Music platforms like Spotify, Soundcloud etc just ruin the experience of making music. And listening to music IMO. The internet was already on a pretty shit trajectory before the LLMs came along.
Audio industry? (Score:2)
Just shows how old I am. I remember when that meant companies that make audio gear, not podcasters.
not confined to podcast, but themed channels, too (Score:2)
This is far beyond just spotify and podcasts. The AI Slop of music has invaded YouTube on a massive scale, where common searches of semi-rare material (say, Disney Parks Background Loops) are now flooded with "Ambient" and "Jazz" and "Orchestra" loops that have nothing to do with Disney, their songs (however they are arranged) nor the parks music at all. It is just generic AI-generated junk but picking up on those keywords and including fake Disney video animation content to get the click.
Pretty sure this i
Slop = (Score:4, Informative)
Low quality + low effort. It doesn't matter if it was created by AI or humans.
+1 (Score:2)
Came here to say this. There is a *lot* of garbage in podcast land. The handful I listen to have been around for over ten years. I haven't heard a new one interesting enough to subscribe to in, probably, five or six years.
Suspicious (Score:2)
Jeanine Wright, co-founder of Inception Point, rejects the debate altogether: "The people still talking about slop are still making 6-7 jokes," she said. "It's still yesterday's conversation."
That sounds like someone profiting off slop might say. Reminding people that people hate AI slop always angers the people who generate slop.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, I had to [1]look it up [hollywoodreporter.com] to see:
> Former Wondery exec Jeanine Wright is leading a new firm, Inception Point AI, that's betting on flooding the zone with audio content: "I think that people who are still referring to all AI-generated content as AI slop are probably lazy luddites."
Way to go Jeanine, using gratuitous insults to attack anyone who criticizes your product. You really win friends and make yourself seem mature doing that.
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/ai-podcast-start-up-plan-shows-1236361367/
Search for AI, find AI (Score:2)
So the quote from Nicholas Thompson:
> Wow. The podslop is coming fast.
> I just searched “Sora” on Spotify and 3/4 top searches are the same voice, no host name, ripoff show names, identical content
So if you search for AI, you get lots of AI results.
I don't think this is an apt way to find "slop". I can search for anything, and get lots of that thing.
The fact you can generate on the fly podcast type things doesn't mean podcasts are going away, the podcasts still exist. As long as people listen to those, they will get more attention. Two people talking to each other about niche topics has always been a thing. Just because we can now make a machine talk about somethin
Easy Solution (Score:2)
0 Podcasts. Considering the types of people who host podcasts now I wonder if AI is any worse, seems like a high bar.
Podslop (Score:2)
Not to be confused with the slime from those Alien eggs, though I think the health benefits are similar.
Podcasts are shit - podslop is always the standard (Score:3, Interesting)
Hours of people talking about shit? It's awful with Stern and Limbaugh live. I don't get the appeal. So AI doing the same thing? People get what they deserve.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably a top 40 rock station that hasn't changed the playlist since 1989.
Re: (Score:3)
Stern and Limbaugh were still on the air in 2006, but it was hardly the peak of their relevance. So, to be fair, I'd say that that criticism is itself ten years out of date.
Re: (Score:3)
Podcasts have always pissed me off: I can read the same text in 1/3rd the time it takes to listen to the podcast. They are good only when driving. Caveat emptor: my wife listens to hers at 16x the speed but I can't do that.
Re: (Score:2)
In Pocket Casts, the app I use, there's a playback speed control that can go up to 5x. I usually listen to podcasts at about 3x speed, which feels right to me. I lose a little nuance for audio fiction, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
16x audio playback speeds are typical for screen readers for visually impaired users. Maybe your wife configured something like that, but they take practice to get used to. I only have some familiarity with those because I used to have a blind co-worker and had to su
Re: (Score:3)
Can we extend this to people that think a YouTube video is the proper place to give a tutorial on how to do something with a CLI?
Give me a text document I can read in 2 minutes, and copy and paste stuff out of. I'm not interested in your 10 minute screed asking me to like and subscribe while pitching advertised drek at me, without the most obvious help when I'm looking for your "content."
Re: (Score:2)
Firefox has an extension called Youtube Custom Speed. You can set arbitrary speeds from .05 to 16x in whatever increments you feel like adding. Not that it helps for the dipshits explaining how to type something in a terminal prompt, but it's definitely handy for speeding through laptop disassemblies and the like.
Chrome does appear to have the same thing so it probably works on whatever browser you like.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd rather listen to an audio book or music. The podcast to me has always been 99.999% trash. I don't want to listen to a person talking. Or 2 people talking. When people are having a conversation near me I usually move away. I don't want to hear it.
I'm a sort of quasi-speed reader, but listening to speech compressed into 3 or 5x speed bothers me. If I have to watch corporate training videos.. then yeah 5x is fine.
I like fiction at its original speed, especially if the human doing the reading is a