I had put "[sigh]" in the script, hoping the voice would actually sigh. A bit of humanity. Instead it read it out. Deadpan. Monotone. "Sigh."
That’s when I realised it was going to be a bit trickier than that.
I wanted to answer one simple question: could an AI make a podcast I’d actually choose to listen to? Not "awww, nice for the AI" — but good enough that I’d choose it over a human equivalent on my commute.
The obvious place to start was to grab a thread from Hacker News, stuff it into a model, ask for a script, and churn that into an audio file. It worked. Technically.
It was not that good — nobody would last ten seconds.
