From Pope in a coat to Priest 17?
'Pray Now': AI is coming for our images but what does it mean for our audio?
Viral fake photos of Pope Francis wearing a white puffer coat created using AI image generator MidJourney. They were initially posted on Reddit. Inset: UK pop group East 17 in the video for their song ‘Stay AnotherDay’ YouTube.
If we are seeing Pope in a coat could we soon be hearing ‘Priest 17’ releasing ‘Pray Another Day’?
It’s not as if the technology isn’t there. Where once audio creators would lean on AI to generate transcripts and captions, now we are hearing full podcast episodes and music tracks borne of AI.
Voice cloning is available to anyone with access to Descript or Adobe Podcast. After feeding the software a recording of your voice you can generate a voice model in minutes. Handy for creating a full episode without needing to find time to sit and record, or for those spot edits on the odd word or phrase.
The podcast Synthetic Stories has been created using entirely AI tools - from ChatGPT for the script, to generating voice models for the hosts. The Distorted team created artwork using MidJourney, even the press release was written by AI. Here’s how they did it.
Whether it’s virtual DJs coming for radio or podcasters sitting back and letting AI (quite literally) do the talking, AI is coming for our audio. The next step is for us humans to find the best and most responsible ways to make use of these incredible tools.
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🎧 #Podcasting
Which podcast is celebrating 24million downloads in seven months? | Podnews
Slate partners with YouTube to bring podcasts to the platform | Slate
What is open podcasting and why does it matter? | Podcast Standards Project
No video for your podcast on Spotify? Here’s how your podcast will show up in the feed | @BigTentSocial
🎶 #SoundDesign
Want to know the main tools for sonic branding? | Marketing Mag
Winner of Wikipedia’s sound logo contest revealed | Wikimedia Foundation
🔮 #AudioFuture
Can we expect to see video and audio platforms merge? | Forbes
The Conversational AI Leadership Council petitions for AI regulation | Bradley Metrock, LinkedIn
🗣 #SocialAudio
This week social audio news podcast #AllThingsAudio was named as Goodpod’s #2 Indy Tech News podcast 🎉 There’s no new episode this week but you can catch up on our conversation with Zealous.app creator Gregarious and all our other episodes here.
Follow All Things Audio wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. Leave a rating and/or review to help more people find us.
In a recent Stop.Rewind.Play. I wrote about the Spotify UI changes and what they might mean for creators. Thanks to reader Morgan Evetts for recommending this episode of Decoder where we hear more about how Spotify is as invested in audio as ever and how the switch to video is intended to improve discoverability.
Here’s my mega tweet giving a summary of the episode too.
“The Wilhelm Scream has been used in every Star Wars movie, every Indiana Jones movie, Willow, Poltergeist, Toy Story, King Kong and about a hundred other films… The sound was used by Ben Burtt, who named the effect after Private Wilhelm, a character in another 1950s film, The Charge at Feather River, in which the sound effect was reused.”