My name is Janine Wright and I am the CEO of
Inception Point AI. And what does Inception Point
AI do and how do you make shows? Inception Point
AI designs AI -generated personalities and then
launches them into the world as 360 creators
and we create AI -generated content on their
behalf across multiple different platforms. And
we've started and grown up in audio. In the process,
we built what we believe to be the world's largest
independent podcast company by Showcount. From
the reviews that I've seen of your work, I'm
wondering whether you're being judged a bit too
much on the early stuff which is there and not
necessarily some of the stuff which is there
now. I mean, I think that's fair. I mean, obviously,
that's part of what I said in my piece that we
posted. Yeah, I mean, at this point, we've created
more than 160 ,000 episodes. And we've been doing
it for more than two years. We were very early
in experimenting with AI. This was early in our
own capabilities and early in AI's capabilities.
And a lot of the stuff at the beginning, I mean,
frankly, it really sucks. You know, we go back
and listen to it and we cringe. But I understand
this is a very... I've been working with creators
in the podcasting space for many years, and pretty
much without fail, everyone is embarrassed about
their first episodes, their first season, right?
Because it takes a while to get practice and
to get good. But I've also been candid that even
some of the stuff that we make today might not
be good, right? We still do a lot of experimentation.
Some of it lands and some of it doesn't. And
some of it, some of the stuff I really love and
some of the stuff doesn't do it for me, but it
does it for other people. And all of those things
are okay. I'm kind of looking at some of the
ones that you have been promoting recently. And,
you know, there are very few reviews, listener
reviews on there. There's one listener review
for Bloom and Banter, which is hosted by Nigel
Thistledown, somebody with an accent almost as
ridiculous as mine. And that review isn't particularly
positive, shall we say. I'm wondering how many
people are, I mean, you know, frankly, is this
an SEO play? Are you there flooding podcast directories
with... content um and hoping that people um
find that content um you know in terms of seo
or are you actually seeing people coming back
again and again uh well we're definitely seeing
people coming back again and again which is why
we're leaning into many of our personalities
um i don't know if it's fair to say like flooding
with seo there's lots of businesses that make
content based on uh what people are wanting and
searching for. And perhaps that's been a problem
with the way that we've been doing podcasting
in the past. I mean, at some of the companies
that I was at previously, you would make this
beautiful, brilliant, incredible show and then
title it something that nobody has ever heard
of. And then you would have to spend... huge
amounts of money to invest in telling people
that you made this show and this is the title
of this show and then they would they would go
and they would have to type in to candidly what
are these like rudimentary search directories
that a lot of these podcast platforms have and
you would hope and pray that they typed in exactly
what you titled this show so that they could
try and find that um and that was part of what
drove up um the content production marketing
and talent costs of making content under this
traditional model um which has resulted in i
mean really a widespread i don't mean to be dramatic
but extinct extinction event across our industry
where we're seeing you know, Stitcher and Gimlet
and Wondery Layoffs and, you know, Odyssey. And
I mean, these companies that are just not finding
sustainable business models to continue to produce
original content or even, you know, partner content
profitably. Right. So, yes, I mean, if I'm going
to make I know I've said this before, if I'm
going to make a podcast about whales, we title
it whales, because that way, when people are
looking for content on whales, they can find
our content. Yeah, it's the Max Cutler way of
titling a show, isn't it? He had a had a serial
killers show, which was called Serial Killers.
And yeah, absolutely. Exactly. Yeah. And then,
you know, and then it also means because. Our
time to production is dramatically less and our
costs of production are less. It means that we
can surf trends much better than traditional
podcasting organizations. So a week ago when
Charlie Kirk was shot, we had content about Charlie
Kirk up. We had a living biography. We had a
content and a new show about his assassination
up within an hour. So when people typed Charlie
Kirk into Apple and Spotify, we were three of
the top five shows, even beating out the Daily
Mail. The only one that was beating us was the
Charlie Kirk show. So that means that we're able
to meet a need for content that people want,
that they're looking for in that moment. And
that has not really ever been part of the commercial
podcast business model until now. When his assassin
was arrested, we had a new episode up within
15 minutes. Did a human being check that first?
When we are producing political or news -related
content, especially when it's new shows that
we are launching, we listen to the content before
it launches. And part of the reason why we haven't
leaned into news and politics quite yet is because...
I think there still needs to be human review
and not even going to say editorializing, but
still AI is not so great at always capturing
the tone of the moment. Yeah. And when you are
crafting personalities that you want to be complex,
you have... into these personalities, things
like senses of humor and flaws and weaknesses
and things. And so sometimes they don't always
treat sensitive topics with enough sensitivity.
They don't strike exactly the right chord. And
so as we think about news and politics, we are
figuring out how do we build the right... Infrastructure
that still leverages AI and still is consistent
with our model, but mitigates the risk of getting
it wrong. And that probably means that we need
to have a well -known news person who is reviewing
that content before it was released and is making
sure that we're striking. that we're getting
it right and striking the right tone. Yeah. So
human review there is important, but human review
for a podcast about whether it's knitting or
about gardening isn't necessarily as important.
Yeah. I mean, there's all sorts of levels of
risk, right, associated with the different content.
I mean, so we think about which ones need to
be. much more curated and where we need to be
much more careful. And then we also really examine
and stay on top of what are the capabilities
of the tools, right? AI still struggles with
numbers, right? I would not rely on AI to do
your math homework, right? So when we're thinking
about current, like what are the topics that
we want to cover, we lean into the things that
we know that AI is really good at. for which
we are less concerned about any potential downside
risk if it's giving health and wellness advice.
We're going to want to make sure that we're doing
more to... pull from multiple different sources
and mitigate against hallucinations and that
somebody is involved in listening and reviewing
the content before it's released. But yeah, I
mean, I'm releasing 3 ,000 episodes a week and
I have eight people on my team. There's no way
we're listening to all the content. There's no
way we're listening to the overwhelming majority
of our content before it's released. There's
one podcast directory out there removing AI -generated
podcasts from its directory. What's your thought
on that? I think that it's an antiquated thinking.
I think that in a very short amount of time,
if I can make yet another bold prediction, that
will probably cause stir. You're not going to
upset more people, are you? That seems to be
my thing lately. I think that in a very short
amount of time, and I would predict certainly
less than 24 months and probably less than 12.
AI will become the default tool for creating
content. And this conversation around is it AI
or not, transparency or not, will go away the
same way that this happened with, you know, digital
photography and photo editing, right? I mean,
now nobody makes a disclosure like this picture
was taken with a digital camera and was edited
after the fact, right? Everybody knows. People
use digital photography and photo editing. And
in fact, nowadays you make a disclosure when
something is not captured. You would say this
is made on traditional 35 millimeter and is not
edited, right? Because that's been the thing
that's special about it. Already there was a
survey on YouTube where 92 % of creators said
that they're using AI in their creative process.
And I think there's a difference between using
AI as part of your creative process and a difference
between using AI as the only part of your creative
process. We're not using AI as the only part
of our creative process. And I think that is
a very, very nuanced conversation that people
don't realize. So right now, the standard is,
you know, it's been relayed to us and we're kind
of following as the community guidelines. If
you use AI. It is a material portion of your
content you need to include a disclosure. So
we include, we're AI transparent. We include
disclosure in all of our content. I know you
reference that. You didn't do that at the beginning
and now you do. Why did you change your view
there? We were limited because we have so many
episodes. We were limited by the API call capacity.
to be able to dynamically update all of our content.
So we were not able to go back quickly to do
it with all of our back catalog. But now we were
able to build out the process in order to do
that. So now if you go through and you see all
of our show notes, it's now in all of our content.
Yeah, but you didn't when you started, I guess
is the question. So why did you change your mind
and start? disclosing that it was ai generated
you mean like it's two years ago when people
first started making content well i mean to be
clear not all of the content that you hear from
two years ago is ai generated many of it is in
the voices of uh people who are on our team um
some of it we went back and then replaced with
synthetic voices and personalities that we designed
um you know i mean at the time i don't even think
people were thinking about how would you make
an AI disclosure or not? So, I mean, we've adopted
and evolved as the industry evolved. And now
I think we're really proud of the way that we're
leading the way in transparency. All of our personalities,
we have some clever prompt engineering around
how we have them do their AI disclosure so that
they say that they're AI, but they... do it in
a way that sells the benefit of having a host
that is an AI personality. And from our data,
we find very little, sometimes immeasurable drop
-off after our AI disclosure. So our read is
that... If people like the personality and they
like the content, they don't care that it's AI.
In the same way as there's an explicit tag in
podcasting where you can mark if you use saucy
language or adult discussions, some people have
been calling for an AI tag to help audiences
or advertisers programmatically filter out majority
AI content. What's your view on that? I think
that we're in a moment. Well, I mean, first of
all, I think that some people are trying to capitalize
on the fear around this conversation to make
news for themselves. The conversation is, if
you have people who are really thoughtfully engaging
in this conversation, I think the conversation
is much more complicated, right? Because if you're
using, you know, ChatGPT to make a script, but
you're... actually reading that into the mic,
is that materially AI generated? If you're, you
know, actually write the script, but you use
a synthetic voice, is that materially AI generated?
If you're doing an interview and it's a real
person that's interviewing a digital person,
is that AI generated, materially AI generated?
It's getting to the point now where... It's so
nuanced. I mean, I've actually had people reach
out to me that some of these people who are in
this space making commentary that I can't believe
they're doing this or they need to have disclosure
or, you know, more disclosure. Advertisers aren't
going to want this. Right. I have people behind
the scenes emailing me saying, I work at this
company and we're using AI in our process. Right.
And basically every podcast that I'm doing, some
people, you know, going for the jugular, asking
me the tough questions about. controversy in
this space and then we get off the call and then
they say how do you think that i could better
use ai in my process to make my process more
efficient or could you all recreate my voice
and what would that sound like and maybe i could
actually take a vacation sometime right there's
the creators uh are going to be this is the most
powerful creative tool that the world has ever
seen and creators are going to be leaning in
to this technology very quickly. And this conversation
is going to go by the wayside. But in the meantime,
as people are interested in, we will follow the
guidelines as to as much disclosure as you want
us to have. The reality is we've not heard any
pushback from any advertiser ever. And we...
are not finding that we're missing out on audiences.