India-based audio sequence platform maker Pocket FM goals to be the Netflix of audio. That’s, the corporate intends to match its audio sequence with a whole bunch of episodes to its customers’ tastes. For that to work, it must launch content material quickly — one thing it’s now turning to AI to assist with.
The Lightspeed-backed startup is giving its writers an AI device set that may do issues like recommend higher endings to an episode or make the narrative extra participating. The hope is that the instruments will velocity up the storywriting course of.
Pocket FM already makes use of some AI instruments like ElevenLabs to generate voices for audio sequence. It additionally examined AI instruments for writing and adaptation help internally.
Rohan Nayak, Pocket FM’s founder, mentioned it’s rolling out the AI instruments to all writers, so it’s going to take them much less time to complete their episodes.
The writing device, dubbed CoPilot, can be utilized to assist any author create a narrative.
CoPilot can remodel narrative-based writing into dialog-based writing for a selected phase. It might additionally do “beat evaluation” to form the writing in a strategy to makes it extra participating for an audio sequence of a selected style. The device moreover has primary chatbot-style writing options corresponding to “shorten,” “develop,” and the flexibility to generate textual content by way of a immediate.
To construct CoPilot, the corporate examined 1000’s of hours of information factors to grasp what makes customers interact extra with a selected storyline in a selected style.
Based mostly on that, it added writing suggestion options designed to extend battle between characters and suggest endings for an episode to make it extra thrilling. AI also can recommend tags for background results that can be utilized whereas producing the audio.
The device can routinely generate bios of characters, their relationships, and summarize plot factors of various episodes, permitting creators to refer again to those particulars whereas writing.
CoPilot additionally has a assessment device, which checks for plot factors, grammar, and leaves qualitative suggestions by feedback on an episode.
Beneath the hood, Pocket FM is coaching smaller fashions to take care of context for a narrative for character arcs and relations, together with narrative consistency. Plus, using indicators from customers, the startup is nudging AI so as to add extra drama to the story.
Worldwide growth and localization plans
Alongside the arrival of the AI instruments, Pocket FM launched adaptation instruments for varied markets that not solely translate the textual content from one language to a different but additionally change names and phrases which can be extra suited to that area’s tradition.
The corporate first debuted this device as part of the CoPilot suite in Germany earlier this 12 months to transform tales from different areas after reportedly struggling to have interaction customers within the European nation final 12 months.
Nayak mentioned the corporate noticed nice outcomes from this trial, with a relentless enhance in month-to-month in-app income, which crossed $700,000 in June.
“After we began increasing into new areas, it used to take us 12-18 months to meaningfully exist in that market. It’s important to have a minimum of 1,000 hours of content material to start out buying customers and scaling the market. Now we will do that in lower than three months,” Nayak mentioned.
The device elevated author productiveness by as much as 50% for the German market by way of present output. Plus, the device helped the corporate create extra error-free drafts of the reveals that resulted in increased person retention for audio sequence.
Within the U.S, sequence created with the assistance of those new AI instruments at the moment are contributing 10% of playtime. Plus, these reveals have generated $7 million in income within the final 12 months whereas decreasing the price of manufacturing by 2-3 occasions.
Constructing tech to scale content material era
On account of adopting completely different AI options internally, Pocket FM has been capable of scale the content material rapidly. The startup mentioned it launches near 1,000 pilots per 30 days. And simply the sheer quantity of content material leads to a couple of of them turning into hits.
However the audio present is only one half. The corporate is already engaged on instruments to transform tales into comedian strips with its Pocket Toons platform. Plus, Nayak mentioned video is a potential format the corporate might discover, too. The startup, which has raised over $196 million in funding throughout rounds, is experimenting with a micro drama app as nicely.
By subsequent 12 months, Pocket FM needs to launch its personal singular massive language mannequin (LLM), which will probably be primarily based on information collected from its reveals and incorporate completely different instruments like writing help, adoption, dramatization, and story context retention. The corporate mentioned that when it switches to its personal LLM, it received’t want to coach a ton of small fashions for separate options.
AI’s potential downsides
Adopting AI has had its unwanted effects.
Pocket FM has already laid off individuals who have been staff or contractors throughout a number of rounds within the final 12 months. There have additionally been studies of writers seeing diminished returns over time. And the corporate is going through lawsuits in California over employment and wage points.
“Like most content-led industries, we work with a various community of writers, voice artists, and manufacturing companions on a undertaking foundation, tailoring assets to every market. AI has had minimal impression on our core artistic group; as a substitute, it has opened new avenues to develop attain and output,” an organization rep mentioned, in response to those layoffs.
There are questions round high quality, as nicely. The corporate measures high quality by the retention numbers of a present.
The bottom argument is that the brand new AI instruments act as a writers’ room even for solo creators, so they’ll be capable to produce extra content material at a fast charge. Plus, primarily based on the numbers, writers can rapidly edit the story with the assistance of AI. Nevertheless, these instruments can very nicely induce “AI slop” — or low-quality, AI-generated content material — into the platform and will impression a person’s suggestions, making it troublesome for them to find good tales.
Pocket FM argues that tales which have a stable construction will acquire reputation, regardless of AI serving to them.
The corporate famous that each piece of content material is reviewed by its AI-powered moderation framework to make sure high quality and originality. It additionally claims its AI moderation checks for issues like duplication, copyright points, content material well being, and different high quality measures earlier than approving audio to go reside. Every present receives and equal push, and person engagement finally determines a present’s rating.
One other concern is that writers might turn out to be overly depending on AI over time.
In Germany, AI is writing extra content material than people per present for choose titles. With Pocket FM’s plans to roll out extra AI instruments, the quantity of AI-written content material might enhance. And with that, the expectation of churning out extra reveals might rise, too. Until person adoption additionally rises quickly, common returns might drop.
The corporate didn’t straight tackle iinfoai’s questions on returns, however mentioned that its AI instruments can velocity up a author’s work and assist them edit an episode primarily based on numbers and viewers suggestions. That’s they might make focused enhancements, as a substitute of doing a full rewrite.
“This manner, quicker content material creation doesn’t essentially dilute high quality or relevance; it simply shifts the author’s function in direction of modifying, refining, and steering extra productive output,” a spokesperson mentioned in a press release.
