'Planet Money' Goes AI - Vulture

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'Planet Money' Goes AI - Vulture

Would you miss me if I’m gone? That’s the anxious question lurking in the subtext of the latest Planet Money miniseries, a three-parter in the vein of “ Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt” and “ Planet Money Buys a Superhero” that sees the team embarking on a journey to see if they can create an episode using only generative AI tools. The limitation is taken very seriously, from utilizing a script created by a program trained on the show’s archives to relying on a read generated by an AI voice-over engine that’s been trained on former host Robert Smith’s past recordings. It’s not the first such effort to replicate a podcast using AI tools: The Filmcast crew played with a version of this not too long ago, and the Joe Rogan AI experience exists. But this being a Planet Money project, it’s certainly the most educational effort, with the entire endeavor packaged as a soup-to-nuts learning series in which hosts Jeff Guo and Kenny Malone speak with various AI experts and practitioners who offer some insight into what exactly our automated-media future might look like. Grimes even makes an appearance, sorta. You should check out the miniseries if you’re at all interested in this stuff, but for now, I’ll cut to the chase. The AI-generated episode isn’t great … but it isn’t bad, either. More importantly, the thing is nearly passable. Had I listened to the final product without context, it’s entirely possible I would’ve thought it was an exceptionally subpar episode that the team phoned in because summer Fridays have started. I would also have thought, Wait, Robert Smith is back? Why does he sound so blitzed? “What you heard was kind of the best we could do,” said Malone. When we spoke last Friday, he had just returned from a brief vacation off the grid (fitting) and was still trying to sort through his thoughts. On one hand, Malone was despondent about what generating AI is clearly going to do to the future of his/our profession, especially given the rapid rate at which the technology seems to be improving. On the other hand, he continues to be bothered by just how annoying the tools were to use. In his accounting, each step of the process had been a huge struggle, with every artificially generated component requiring a considerable amount of wrestling to get anywhere close to a standard of quality — if they were usable at all to begin with. (Later, it occurred to me that this is probably how my editors feel about first drafts filed by writers all the time.) Nevertheless, he’s aware it won’t be long before many of those frictions get ironed out, and despite the frustration, Malone was nevertheless fascinated by the fruits of the programs. “It kept generating stuff that was sometimes mediocre and sometimes boring, but then other times it would head off in a direction that was weird but really interesting,” he said. Like, for example, how the program suggested the use of a radio drama as a running thread through an episode. The prompt had contained no such idea. Generative AI tools are generally talked about as systems that trade in patterns. To oversimplify in explanation, when a particular tool is trained on a model — an archive, a body of work — for the purposes of replication, what it’s broadly doing is constructing a framework out of historical patterns for application on novel prompts and new scenarios. In my mind, the fact that such tools were able to replicate Planet Money’s aesthetic with some relative ease raises a few curious questions about style. What does the automated replicability of a house style illuminate about that style? What’s the line between exercising a house style and being a parody of yourself? Is it unfair to feel that the successful AI automation of a house style somehow … cheapens its value? “What is style but just a set of rules you follow?” said Malone, staring blankly into the Zoom screen. “And does that make us special? I don’t know. Probably not. It’s probably less interesting than we think.” In the way that the anxious mind does, Malone’s existential spiral has only metastasized over time. “The technology will only get better,” he said. “This is a concern that’s way off in the distance, but it gives me the most anxiety: What is the value proposition of what we do? If what people want from a thing they listen to is a good way to mainline information, it’s go...