Hello, and welcome back to PodNews Weekly Review.
It's 2026, and we've got some exciting news from
one of our friends. It's Wondercraft. They've
come out with a new product. So who better to
ask than Dimi Nicolai, the CEO and co -founder
of Wondercraft. Hey, Dimi, how are you? Hey,
Sam, I'm doing fantastic. How are you? Thank
you for the invite. You're very welcome. Now,
two seconds before we get into what new product
you've got, just for those who don't know, give
me a quick update. Who and what is Wondercraft?
Yeah, for sure. So WonderCraft is a platform
that we built a couple of years ago with the
aim of making audio content creation a lot easier.
I think for most of your listeners, obviously
most people will be podcast creators. They're
well aware of like the arduous task that it sometimes
may be to record properly and edit properly.
With the rise of AI voices, we decided to build
an application layer that's similar to Canva
for anyone that's aware in the sense that it's
a very easy to use interface for someone to use
AI voice. including their own and create podcast
content. Of course, there's the audience. I have
to clarify that by no means this refers to long
form banter style, people discussing style podcasts,
but rather more so like information dissemination,
something very specific also. I kind of opened
a new market for businesses to be creating podcasts
to just have an additional touch point for their
customers, but also for internal communication
purposes. In the past, I hadn't seen many podcasts
being created inside organizations for internal
communications, whereas this has happened quite
a lot with WonderCraft for training new people
or disseminating information within an organization.
So this has been the past of WonderCraft over
the past couple of years, ever since we launched.
I remember when I came to one of your demos,
it was also about advertising. advertising as
well using voices within advertising. Yeah, that's
correct. So apart from creating audio content
within an application layer on top of AI Voices,
you can use that application to create podcasts,
but you can use it for other purposes as well.
One of our main use cases has actually been creating
ads. So we've had big customers like Spotify,
Amazon, iHeart, all creating ads on WonderCraft,
their internal creative teams creating ads on
WonderCraft. But also other use cases like meditations
and also audiobooks have been a couple of others
that we've seen happening at scale. When I had
my own radio station, I wish Wondercroft was
around to do the advertising for me. Would have
saved me a lot of hours. Now, very excitingly,
2026, and you're launching a new product extension
to Wondercroft. What is it? Yeah, so the extension
of the product is evolving into the video space
as well. So apart from being able to come into
the platform and create audio content by leveraging
AI voices, it's very similar. You can come into
the platform and create audio and video content,
including video podcasts. You can create a video
podcast from scratch. Of course, you may be wondering,
like, what does that mean in terms of the visuals?
And what that means is it could be anything between
you can generate footage with the AI, you can
use stock footage. if you want, or you can use
avatars as part of that flow. We advise usually
against just having two avatars speaking the
whole time and basically go end to end in creating
an engaging way of presenting some information.
We've grouping that in the podcast category because
it's a broad term and you can have a conversational
style video. It's not just for podcasts. There's
like many other things like training videos,
educational videos, again, like what you mentioned
before, ads as well. So moving from the audio
ad space to the video ad. space with the idea
here being that we want to serve the same audience
of like i don't know where to start i don't know
how to create content i don't know how to edit
I would love to just use a simple interface to
go end to end in creating that. So people come
to the platform, they describe what they want,
and then it's on WonderCraft to figure out what
models to use across all of the different AI
models between video and audio and images and
sound and avatars and stitch everything together
to create a compelling story off of what you're
describing. And then the interesting thing is
that we present everything to you on simple to
use timelines so that you can make edits. It's
not just a one shot that you... just can't edit
from that point on so this is what we created
this basically easy to use video creation platform
on top of ai models and there's two more components
that may be interesting too the first one is
that apart from creating your podcast on wondercraft
you can also visualize your podcast meaning if
you have an audio first podcast it's very easy
for you to come to wondercraft and create a video
On top of that, the way that you do that is you
go through a simple workflow. You upload your
podcast, go through a simple workflow by describing
what it is that you want in terms of the visuals
that you would want on the video. And then we
create that video for you. Maybe it has some
avatars, maybe it has some generated B -roll
that's relevant to what is being spoken about,
some captions, some sound waves, whatever you
define. And then you get a video version of your
podcast so that you can very easily reach YouTube
and the other video platforms. That's the first
part that may be interesting. And the second.
part is that we made it very easy to edit existing
podcasts, especially video podcasts, but also
audio podcasts. You just upload your content.
You just chat to the AI agent to help you to
perform that editing so that you don't need to
do that editing yourself. I brought this last
part explicitly last because it's still in alpha
mode. So there's still some. exploration to be
done. And I know that there's other organizations
that are doing this last part as well. So your
audience may be a little bit more experienced
than that. So I primarily focused on the AI generative
process, whether it's to create your podcast
from scratch or to turn your audio podcast into
a video. Seeing the demo. So this is very cool.
And again, using AI prompts is very easy to do.
I think one of the biggest challenges for anyone
who's used any of the video AI generating tools
is editing. So having an editor within that,
because a lot of the times you create something
in say VO and you go back to it and you can't
recreate, you can't modify it to the extent you
have to start from scratch each time. So I think
that's going to be interesting. Who's your target
audience? Is it existing podcasts? Is it brand
new YouTubers? Who do you think you're going
to go for first? yeah so there's a few different
types of outputs that you can create for what
we're describing visualizing your podcast turning
your podcast into a video yeah that is existing
podcasters that i know personally myself many
i'm sure that sam as well have been trapped in
the audio medium and haven't had the opportunity
to explore the more prominent video channels
apart from the very easy of just like adding
a static image and obviously that doesn't take
you too far so there is a primary audience there
and visualizing audio but apart from that, there's
a couple of other use cases here in that especially
for bigger organizations turning existing communication
material into video, whether that's training
new onboarding cohorts or enabling sales teams
by teaching them new information. Video is by
far better than PDF in terms of teaching someone
new information. And the only reason why people
don't have that right now is because there's
friction in creating that video. So we've removed
that friction and we made it very easy to create
video by providing some notes about what you
want to convey. And then we're finding that a
lot of our users, for example, the World Bank
has started doing that and Amazon started doing
that. They are a lot more effective in communicating
what they want to communicate instead of doing
that over notes and writing. And another very
big use case is generally extending that, like,
I guess it's education, but like it's also education
in not just inside organizations, but education
generally. We have quite a few educators on the
platform. that are creating educational material
turning their class notes turning books turning
other material into videos so that whatever age
those students may be because there's like different
aesthetics different visual styles that you can
create your video from those students can actually
engage with the content a little bit easier and
make the teaching process more effective the
questions regarding future direction of where
wondercraft might go with this so If I look at
something like Riverside or Descript, they have
an AI component within it. So I can, like we
are now, I can record two people talking. I can
edit the transcript. I can create the video.
I can edit the video. I can create clips. I have
AI. The same is pretty much with Riverside. So
they're becoming... that start to finish type
model. I call them the five P's. You can do your
preparation, your production, your post -production,
your promotion stuff, and then make some profit
in terms of monetization. Do you see Wondercraft
getting into the whole sphere of also... allowing
you to create like we are now and then also create
from that so instead of uploading the audio instead
of uploading something actually you are the destination
myself i'm going to go to wondercraft invite
a guest write two guests create my audio and
then automatically use the ai in wondercraft
now to create my video and create maybe clips
from it and do other things where do you see
wondercraft fitting in is it going to be a tool
as a component of other workflows, or will you
become the primary workflow itself? That's a
great question. So... To answer that question,
Sam, I'll take you to who our primary audience
is. It kind of touches on the previous question,
which is the teams within organizations that
want to create audio and video content. And we're
finding that a lot of these teams don't really
have the appetite or time or even equipment to
go through that recording process, whether it's
video or audio. But they do want to convey the
message, the story that the organization has.
So we primarily focused on the... generative
side. And we realized that we may be early on
that. We're maybe skating where the puck is going
with this product, but we are less reliant on
screen recordings and what Riverside or these
scripts are doing on capturing that first source
and we're focusing on users making it very easy
for users to describe what it is that they want
off of their content and then us using generative
media to try and convey that story to the best
way possible again we recognize that generative
media in many ways is not a hundred percent where
it needs to be and i can understand that some
of your listeners may think that what I'm describing
is quote unquote slop, but there's a lot that
you can do both in terms of improving the storytelling
capabilities by leveraging different models and
combining everything together, layering music,
layering voiceovers, rather than just an eight
second like Sora clip. And apart from that, you
should of course expect huge improvements on
generative models over the next six to 12 months
that would allow even better storytelling. And
we want to be the platform that. leverages that
spike that increase that advancement in these
models to make it very easy for you to convey
your story so yeah that's that's kind of like
the evolution of wondercraft in terms of like
where we will be from one year from now time
will tell what the product will look like exactly
but what i can tell you is that it will be less
focused on the recording process and more so
focused on turning user thoughts into an engaging
story by leveraging generative media. Okay. I
think you've created a version for PodNews Weekly
Review that you've sent to James. So hopefully
people will be able to come to both our show
notes and also to PodNews Daily to go and see
a link and see how this all looks. But if I wanted
to get on board now and I wanted to try it, what's
the best place to go? And is there a trial version
or do I have to sign up? Yeah. So that's a great
question, Sam. You can go to wondercraft .ai
or to go directly to the studio, go to wondercraft
.ai slash studio. It's very easy for you to sign
up and try it out. As part of the onboarding
flow, we're going to create a video for you so
you can check out what it feels like. And then
go ahead. The very first thing that you will
see when you sign up is to upload your podcast.
and describe what it is that you want in terms
of editing. If you just want to upload your podcast
and turn it into a video, very easy, like one
button and a couple of like steps in the workflow.
And in terms of trying it out, yes, you can try
it out. There will be some limitations. So you
will most likely need to, if you want to use
the full features, upgrade. But as a thank you
for the invite, Sam, maybe what we can do is
for anyone that's listening to this. Prior to
February 20th, you can use the code SAM50. So
that's SAM50. And you will get a 50 % discount
on trying out WonderCraft. Nice. Last question.
Is there going to be an API? I was just thinking
to myself, if you wanted to automate the flow,
so I create my podcast, let's say we bust out
our sponsors and I publish it. Can I create WonderCraft
as an endpoint destination through an API so
that I don't have to manually upload each time?
Yeah, there is an endpoint. We already have the
endpoint, but it's not public. We are onboarding
one by one the users that want to be using the
API for video generation. For audio generation,
it is public. but I'm guessing you're referring
to video here. So whoever does want access to
API, I would recommend you guys reach out to
support at wondercraft .ai, explaining what it
is that you're after. I'm guessing the workflow
that Sam describes is a compelling one for us,
so we'd be happy to enable it for you guys. So
yeah, describe what it is that you want off the
endpoint and off the API access, and we'll try
to make it happen for you. Congratulations. I
think everyone should go and try it. SAM50, that's
the discount code. Amazing. Thank you, Sam, for
the invite. Always a pleasure to chat to you
and congrats on the news on your end as well.
I'm very happy to be seeing Colton. That's very
kind. Thank you so much. See you soon, mate.