The arrival of ChatGPT and other consumer-friendly AI tools is undoubtedly one of the biggest mainstream technology developments we’ve had in years. It’s also sparked widespread discussion about how this new technology impacts the future of work, creativity, and beyond.

The use of ChatGPT is already taking place across every industry, so there’s no good reason why podcasters shouldn’t take advantage also. Consistently producing high-quality content can be time-consuming. It’s not just recording and editing, add up the time it takes for research and planning, promotion and marketing, and a multitude of admin tasks—it fast becomes a struggle to make sure another great episode hits listeners’ feeds each week. This is where artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT can be beneficial to a podcaster.

In this article, we'll explore how podcasters can use the power of AI in their workflows. We’ll also explain what ChatGPT is, and provide specific use cases for how podcasters can leverage ChatGPT and other AI tools.

First, let’s look at how the use of AI in podcasting is viewed by both podcasters and listeners.

Should I use AI for podcasting?

Recent research by Acast into sentiment around ChatGPT and AI tools in podcasting showed that both creators and listeners overwhelmingly support the use of AI tools. Revealing that 100% of surveyed podcasters and the vast majority of listeners (85%) believe that it’s ethical for podcasters to use AI tools to create podcast content.

Podcasters are far more likely than listeners, 84% vs. 36%, respectively, to believe there should be no limits on how podcasters use the tools. About half of the listeners (49%) believe it’s ethical for podcasters to use such tools as long as they’re only being used for idea generation.

Tommy Walters, Commercial Insights Manager at Acast, explains “While podcasters may be ready to dive headfirst into AI technology, their listeners want them to use the technology to enhance — not replace — human thinking. Podcasters should use AI to help them plan their content, but they shouldn’t use it to automate the entire creative process.”

In summary: don’t break the special bond between podcast host and listener by letting AI get in the way of the human connection. Instead, podcasters should use AI to make their lives easier in the creative process, which will help bring listeners more of the authentic storytelling they love tuning in to hear.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a generative AI language model created by OpenAI. It is a powerful tool that can generate natural language text in response to prompts input by users. In other words, you can ask ChatGPT a question or give it a topic to write about, and it will generate a response that sounds like it was written by a human.

Think of it like a search engine, but instead of returning a page of results containing links to websites, it writes back with natural human language directly responding to your question or prompt. In fact, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is now implemented into Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

The chatbot is able to produce compelling essays, draft social media posts, suggest meal plans, and even offer life advice based on the input of the user. The applications of ChatGPT are endless, and the output is genuinely impressive.

ChatGPT isn’t the only AI language model available, with huge tech companies like Google, who've created Google Bard, and Microsoft developing their own tools and integrating them into their own existing products that are used by millions of people every day—so expect to see a lot of these AI tools being used in everyday life.

How can podcasters use ChatGPT?

We’ve already established that ChatGPT can be used in many different ways, but here we’ll share examples of how people who make podcasts can use it to support their day-to-day tasks.

Research and planning

As ChatGPT works like a superpowered search engine, it’s an effective tool to use when researching and planning for an upcoming episode or even a whole podcast series.

For example, if you're struggling to come up with ideas for your next podcast episode, you can ask ChatGPT to generate a list of topics based on your niche or industry. Try using a prompt like this:" “I make a podcast about health and nutrition, what are trending topics in related to my podcast that I could explore in future episodes”. Then you can continue to explore these topics by asking further questions in the prompt chat box. It’s just another tool in the brainstorming toolbox, so don’t forget it’s your own individual creativity that listeners keep coming back for.

If you’re in research mode for a whole new series, it can be extremely helpful to gain an overview of the subject you’re exploring by asking questions to ChatGPT. It’s important to stress that you should always manually fact-check all research that you receive from ChatGPT, as it does not currently provide sources in its responses (however, Bing’s Chat mode does.)

There’s nothing worse than being interviewed by someone who doesn’t know your basic history. So if you’re preparing for guest interviews, ChatGPT can provide background information on the guest that’s publically available on the internet, saving you time from visiting multiple different websites to find out this information. This can help you create bespoke interview questions based on the research you’ve carried out, and make sure your interview is unique and with interesting angles.

Marketing and promotion

Another way podcasters can use ChatGPT is to utilize the tool in their marketing strategy. Digital marketing is crucial to get your podcast heard, so taking advantage of AI to make this easier is a no-brainer.

If you’re not a natural copywriter or find it difficult to start from a blank page, use ChatGPT to draft your show notes or episode descriptions. This can save you a lot of time and effort, especially if you're a solo podcaster. An effective way of doing this is to ask ChatGPT to create a short summary using your episode transcriptions, along with a word limit. It can also support your podcast’s SEO, if you ask it to optimize your show notes for search engines.

Similarly, you could use natural language AI tools to help create social media posts or content for your email newsletters, based on the content of your episode transcriptions or show notes. You could try asking ChatGPT to suggest TikTok video ideas to promote your latest episode that will resonate with your target audience. Being active and visible on social media like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram requires consistent posting, so using AI to support you also keeps your audience engaged between episodes.

Language Translation

ChatGPT is a remarkably able translator. If your podcast has a global audience, or you’re looking to reach a new market with your content, ChatGPT can translate content into different languages. Imagine you want to extend your podcast content to other languages, you could translate episode transcriptions and upload them as blog posts and open yourself up to new audiences. If you wanted to communicate with your international listeners in their native language, ChatGPT can translate your writing in a matter of seconds.

Boring admin stuff

We know not everything in the world of podcasting can be as exciting as recording an episode with a dream guest, but the admin jobs are just as vital in ensuring your podcast is well-managed and consistent. Try using ChatGPT as a virtual assistant to prioritize your to-do lists—input your tasks and deadlines, and it can help you stay organized and manage your workload more effectively.

If a structure is something you struggle with, you can prompt ChatGPT to create a custom podcasting schedule to keep you on track. Just input your specific timeframes, jobs, and deadlines and it will get you started on your very own podcast editorial calendar.

More AI tools podcasters can use

Artificial intelligent tools don’t stop at natural language chatbots, there’s an increasingly growing number of other tools that are using machine learning to make podcasters’ lives easier.

AI-powered podcast editing software

Digital audio workstations (DAWs) and other audio editing software have changed a lot in recent years, thanks to incorporating AI-powered tools and features to radically improve podcast audio quality and time-spent editing.

There are a few different ways podcast editing can be assisted by artificial intelligence tech, including automatically removing unwanted background noise, adjusting and auto-matching audio levels to avoid sections that are too quiet or loud, and even creating transcriptions and captions in one place.

There are a few different companies that offer AI-powered podcast editing services, including Podcastle— which if you use Acast as your podcast host, is integrated into all our plans. Podcastle removes noisy background sounds, as well as automatically removing any filler words you may overuse such as ‘like’, ‘umms’, and ‘uhhs’. It also features audio-to-text transcription.

Descript is another software that uses machine learning algorithms to analyze audio and video content and identify areas that need improvement, such as removing filler words, correcting grammar, and reducing background noise. They also offer ultra-realistic voice cloning with a feature called ‘Overdub’, which lets you create a text-to-speech model of your voice or select one from our ultra-realistic stock voices.

Transcription services

An AI-powered transcription service is one of the most useful tools a podcaster can have their back pocket, simply because it’s unlocking a whole new world of content opportunities outside of your audio-only podcast.

For example, creating full episode transcriptions means you can repurpose your content as blog content on your website, which can help with discoverability, as well as being accessible for people who are hard of hearing. You can also use your transcriptions in combination with other AI tools like ChatGPT to create show notes and social posts as we discussed above.

Transcription is included in podcast editing software that we mentioned already, but there are other companies specializing in transcription such as Otter.ai and Trint.

AI-generated art and images

Generative AI art and images are another way for podcasters to help improve their creative workflow. These are tools that are built to create images from textual descriptions entered by users, often resulting in highly detailed and realistic images of objects and scenes that do not exist in the real world.

Podcasters can use AI image generation in many ways. For example, if you’re creating a new podcast, you can use an AI image generation tool to create artwork for your podcast cover—this can save you a lot of time and effort, especially if you're not a skilled graphic designer or can’t afford one. You can also do this for episodic artwork. However, we’d recommend using AI-generated images as a starting point for ideas or a brief to send to a graphic designer who can bring their own originality to the design.

Podcasters can also use AI to create social media posts or blog post images by asking an AI image generation tool to create a series of images related to a particular episode or topic, and then use those images as the basis for social media posts or blog post images.

There are a number of these AI image tools available now, and some of the popular ones include DALL-E by OpenAI, Midjourney, and Dream by Wombo.

Summary

Hopefully, in this article, you’ve found helpful use cases for how you can leverage AI-tools into your podcasting workflow. AI-powered technology is going to become even more common in the future, so get ahead of the curve by utilizing tools to improve your productivity for tasks such as editing, transcription, research, marketing, and translations. However, keep in mind that it’s your human creativity and individual personality that makes you unique as a podcast creator, and the reason why listeners love your show—something that AI can never replace.