Advertising Week Briefing: Podcast industry juggles using AI tools with maintaining medium’s intimacy

“Advertisers are looking for outcomes, and [if] using AI helps me get a sale faster, helps me inform a consumer faster, helps me be able to optimize quicker, because I’ve got more data coming at me more efficiently — then great. I’m going to show better ROI on my investment,” Sheryl Goldstein, evp and chief industry growth officer at IAB, said onstage during an Advertising Week New York panel on Tuesday, moderated by Digiday. “[Before AI] you needed a huge budget to be able to do things in multiple languages, to be able to have multiple images or different backgrounds. All that can be done so efficiently today.”

But integrating AI technology into podcasts poses issues of transparency, ethics and regulatory compliance, execs said.

“People have such an expectation of personal connection, we run a real risk as an industry if we start deploying AI widely in ways that actually impact content or ads without acknowledgement,” Matt Shapo, IAB’s director of digital audio and video, told Digiday.

Podcast industry still figuring out AI transparency

As a tool, generative AI can be helpful to replace a word that was misspoken or mispronounced, or to remove filler words from a podcast episode.

Sonoro Media also uses these tools to find key moments in a podcast episode for social clipping and marketing purposes, said Camila Victoriano, co-founder and chief content officer at Sonoro Media, onstage.

For these processes, AI tools mirror editing tools like Microsoft Word – one that people don’t need to credit, Shapo said.

“I don’t see why anybody would have to disclose that. You’re editing your podcast in the same way you’re editing a story that you’re putting online,” Shapo said.

Podcasters are also using generative AI tools to translate shows into other languages. 

Sonoro translated a Spanish-language, horror podcast called “Relatos de la Noche,” into English using AI and the podcast host’s own voice — with a Spanish accent.

There aren’t industry standards for disclosing the use of AI in podcasting — or otherwise. But Sonoro called out in the show’s content and in the podcast’s show notes that it used AI tools to translate the podcast.

“There was nothing to hide. We were very transparent from the beginning. We called out that it was AI translated, [and mentioned] the software we use. In the content, you always credit the engineers and the producers and the writers. Why not credit these systems that help you make this?” Victoriano said.

Disclosing AI is a topic trade bodies like the IAB are working on determining now, but at the very least podcasters should disclose the use of AI in their show notes, Shapo said. And whether content or ads are AI generated to make sure those vendors are abiding by regulations, he noted.

Unclear how to insulate audio content from AI scraping

Publishers are increasingly taking action to try to protect their content from getting scraped and used without compensation by AI tools, but it’s yet unclear how they are accessing podcasts.

“When the time comes, we definitely want to be a part of protecting our IP,” Victoriano said. “I want to protect the creators that we work with, and really want to be on them to define what they’re comfortable with until there’s more knowledge and more education.”

Sonoro CEO Joshua Weinstein told Digiday that Sonoro’s podcasts are available on RSS feeds, insulating their content somewhat from what’s happening to publishers. It’s “much harder” to scrape content from podcast feeds compared to newsletter or website content, he said.

“It’s harder to steal and manipulate audio. But it’s not impossible. It’s getting easier,” Weinstein said.