Are podcasts routinely using AI voice likeness? (Re: Today Explained)
I generally enjoy Today Explained, but caught an error recently that is dismaying. The first 23 seconds of “The World Cup is Healing Us” mispronounces Cape Verde/Cabo Verde as Cape Verd, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as “Doctor Congo”, which suggests that the intro might be using AI voice likeness of the hosts. The AI transcription on Spotify is proof of the error and that AI slop in = AI slop out. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2eaf8QmBilIVZcucN9j5Ci?si=YRYmYB2CTnmbF4I1MeEr3g
They didn’t care enough to go back and revise. Or perhaps they didn’t listen to it before posting, but it was so jarring to me. It’s hard to imagine the hosts having such a large blind spot for these two country names that just happen to be in the continent of Africa which is how most people from the US still refer to any specific country within Africa… so I guess it could happen, but these are also professional journalists, which makes me think it was AI. Still should have been reviewed though. Not very healing on the part of USA.