In January, iHeartMedia announced plans to use generative AI tools to translate five to 10 existing shows into a number of different languages by the end of this quarter. However, the company postponed that plan.
iHeartMedia is currently gearing up to launch these translated programs by the end of the first half of 2024, a company spokesperson told Digiday.
“We've been experimenting. We're getting better. We're not yet at the level we need to be to say, 'Let's roll out.' However, rapid progress has been made in terms of quality. And we expect that we'll probably get something of that quality this year…but we'll probably know more by the next few earnings calls,” said iHeartMedia CEO ) Bob Pittman said at the fourth quarter results conference on February 29th.
Podcast networks such as iHeartMedia, Spotify, and PodcastOne have publicly announced plans to debut AI-generated speech translation, but few are in production yet (Spotify has released a few test episodes). Masu).
Spotify executives announced in September that they would launch a pilot program with several podcasters to test AI-generated voice translation, but the company announced the program during the company's fourth-quarter earnings conference on February 6. was not mentioned at all. a Spotify spokesperson told Digiday. There was nothing new to share in this regard yet.
Quality issues have agency executives worried about AI's translation capabilities. One podcast ad agency executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Digiday that he is only interested in buying ads related to content if the quality of the content is “really good” and there is an audience. Told. I haven't seen any evidence of either yet.
But they said they understand the logic behind why the podcast network is testing this. For example, if your podcast network gets 1 million downloads per month, a generative AI tool can translate your shows at a relatively low cost, add an additional 100,000 impressions per month, and potentially monetize it with programmatic advertising. Researchers say there is.
However, direct translation of colloquialisms, analogies, and cultural nuances in podcast shows can be difficult to pull off with generative AI tools, they said. The technology typically works by replicating the podcast host's voice and augmenting it to read the show's transcript in another language.
But some podcast companies are debuting translated shows to test how well they attract viewers. Rob Ellin, CEO of parent company LiveOne, said PodcastOne is working on rolling out a “small number” of podcasts translated into Spanish. He did not say when the translated episodes would be released.
The company is working with AI translation company Rask AI to enhance the audio of some podcast hosts into Spanish. PodcastOne is starting with a translation of the true crime podcast Bad Bad Thing.Erin said the accuracy of these translations is overseen by PodcastOne's talent and production teams, but declined to provide further details..
“We haven't proven it's a money maker yet, but we've definitely proven it sounds good and the quality is good. We want to keep getting better,” says Erin. Told.
At the Hot Pod Summit, an audio industry event held in New York City last week, Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, tested the quality of AI-generated audio live. He played some audio clips of him and presented the audience with a quiz consisting of six questions. “Was that clip generated by AI?”
Results were mixed. For the first question, he had three choices and only 11% of participants chose the correct AI-generated clip. Other questions varied from 50/50 votes to 60-70% of the votes to be answered correctly.
However, in response to one question, Patel played an audio clip in Spanish, and 95% of participants correctly answered that the audio was generated by AI. When Patel asked the audience how the translation sounded, one exclaimed, “It was terrible!”
So why would publishers test this if the quality is not up to snuff? Because this is a cost-effective way to expand your podcast show internationally and into non-English markets. That's because it's an expensive method, executives say.
“Doing this manually is uneconomical because so many podcasts have so many episodes and so many languages, and AI is just the solution.” said Pittman during iHeartMedia's recent earnings call. But he added: “How quickly can we monetize it and get it out there? I don't think we've made any predictions yet.”
Some podcast hosts disagree with the cost-cutting argument. Marshall Marshall, podcast host and founder of the New Books Network, translates many of his shows into Spanish the old-fashioned way: hiring Spanish-speaking podcasters. doing. According to Poe, 40% of his New Books Network listeners are not in the United States. But he doesn't think using AI tools will save much time or money, since someone will be needed to verify the accuracy of the translated podcasts anyway, he said. .
Alicia Skidmore Williams, co-host of three Wondery podcasts, including “Even the Rich,” said podcast networks would have to renegotiate contracts with podcast hosts in order to translate their voices into different languages. I pointed out that there is a high possibility.
“If…AI is going to be part of our contract, I want some kind of guarantee,” she said.
