In 2024, Google rolled out what was at the time a pretty startling new feature as part of its NotebookLM AI suite: audio digests of information that were essentially podcasts, sometimes featuring oddly familiar sounding synthetic voices . It was a whole new implementation of generative AI. But it’s not new anymore, and AI proliferation moves pretty fast, so today, AI-generated podcasts account for no less than a third of new podcast feeds , according to the New Feeds Report at an open-sourced site called Podcast Index. Picture what this means: an unknowably massive, apparently endless flood of synthetic chatter about every topic on Earth, bursting forth all the time like when they open those discharge outlets on the Three Gorges Dam . And for what audience? It’s not abundantly clear yet. The bizarre bluster from leadership at the companies that make these podcasts seems to be targeted at investors, not would-be listeners.…