Washington Post’s AI-Generated Podcasts Draw Internal Criticism Over Errors.

The Washington Post’s new personalized podcast push isn’t going as smoothly as the newspaper likely hoped. It reportedly has resulted in numerous errors being included in the AI-generated episodes, including bad pronunciation, misconstruing a story’s focus, and even fabricated quotes. Semafor reports several Washington Post staffers have expressed frustrations with the new “Your Personal Podcast” project, which allows anyone registered on the Post website to create a daily news podcast that has content based on the topics and AI-generated voices they choose.

One editor wrote in an internal Slack message seen by Semafor that it is “truly astonishing” the project was approved for launch. “Never would I have imagined that the Washington Post would deliberately warp its own journalism and then push these errors out to our audience at scale,” the editor reportedly said.

The Washington Post this week said it would begin to allow users to create a podcast-like experience tailored to their preferences. The new “Your Personal Podcast” is an extension of the Post’s alliance with Eleven Labs, which already created audio versions of stories posted on the newspaper’s website, and leverages the paper’s generative AI tool “Ask the Post AI.”

This week Digiday reported the AI-generated episodes include about four stories based on what the users have read on the Post’s app, what they have listened to in the past, and the topics they follow, such as politics, sports or tech news. A pair of AI-generated hosts will then deliver the stories, including human-like banter. The advantage to the format is that the podcast will also evolve as news develops throughout the day. The customization features also reportedly allow users to alter the AI-generated voices and the length of the episode.

Despite the hiccups, there are no plans by the Post to take down its new AI-generated offering. Bailey Kattleman, Head of Product and Design at the Post, told Digiday that they will monitor metrics like return and engagement rate to measure the success of the AI-powered podcast. “It’s early, and it’s an experimental product in a lot of ways,” she said.

The Washington Post already offers news consumers more traditional ways to access the news. Its human-generated podcasts include its daily new series “Post Reports” and “The Seven,” as well as weekly shows like “Impromptu” and “Try This.”