The online podcast recording platform Riverside came out with its own version of a year-end review like Spotify’s “Wrapped.” The recap, called “Rewind,” creates three custom videos for podcasters.
Instead of sharing statistics like how many minutes you recorded, or how many episodes you made, Riverside created a fifteen-second collage of laughter, showing a quick succession of clips in which my podcast co-host and I make each other crack up. The next video is similar, except that it’s a supercut of us saying “umm” over and over.
Then, Riverside scans its AI-generated transcripts of your recordings to find what single word you said more than any other (we’re assuming they cut out words like “and” or “the”).
It’s a bit ironic, but on my podcast about internet culture, my co-host and I said “book” more often than any other word (this was probably skewed by our subscriber-only “book club” recordings… or the fact that my co-host has a book coming out, which we plug incessantly).
Another show on our podcast network, Spirits, said “Amanda” more often than any other word (not because they’re obsessed with me, but because they also have a host named Amanda).
In the podcast network’s Slack, we exchanged our Rewind videos. There’s something inherently funny about a video of people saying “umm” over and over. But we also know what these videos represent: our creative tools are becoming more saturated with AI features, many of which we do not want or need. The Riverside Rewind points to the uselessness of these tools themselves — why would I need a video of my co-host and I saying the word “book” over and over? It’s good for a quick laugh, but there’s no substance.
Though I enjoyed Riverside’s AI recap, its arrival comes at a time when my industry peers are losing opportunities to create, edit, and produce new podcasts, thanks to the same AI tools that generated our Rewind videos. But while AI allows us to automate away some tasks — like editing out our “umms” and dead air — podcasting itself is not tha …