Creating an automated podcast

I wondered if modern LLMs (ChatGPT in particular) can create content for a podcast.


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I find the old logo way more appealing

Goal

Let ChatGPT (or any other LLM) write the script for a episode of a podcast I came up with. After that convert the script into audio (either via actors or speech synthesis).

The podcast idea

After a view experiements I noticed, that simple TTS can still sometimes sound a bit robotic. So I thought the podcast could emphasize that by simply being about robots/androids. To compensate for the few hallucinations ChatGPT sometimes comes up with, I thought the scripts should not be too accurate about anything really.

In short: The podcast is about two androids called Alan and Cori, which have been build in the year 2088. They travel through time to find solutions to the problems of the modern world.

I know, it sounds weird... Maybe it could also become an audiobook someday ?

How it works

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The script...

This will show that modern software often combines existing tools and might just be a new "pipeline" that combines results from different sources.

  1. I create a script with ChatGPT (that works like a charm, even if you have to correct some things) and save that into a text file.
  2. My Python script reads that file, and assigns the speakers and creates the API calls to my emphasis API.
  3. Then it's just a matter of time: My API creates the audio files and the Python script downloads them into a directory.
  4. Everything is now in place and can be merged together. This is done with FFmpeg , which can concatenate audio files (and way more cool stuff).

To make the audio more like real podcast episodes, I created a small intro and outro melody, that is automatically mixed into the result.

The Result

I think the result is pretty awesome, especially when you consider the fact that all you need is ChatGPT, Python, TTS and FFmpeg (and the last three of these are around for a while now).

You can listen to the first episode here:

A look into the future

I might tweak the whole idea a bit and if the result gets a bit better, I might upload the episodes to podigee.com or alike. I just have to find the time to improve the prompts for ChatGPT and might find an even better TTS engine, the rest is alreay done.