74. But, Can AI Be a Podcast Host's ASSISTANT? with Aneri Shah & "Gabby"

We've been dunking on AI a whole lot lately. And that's not going to change any time soon. Because most of the uses for AI that we're seeing are cheap, sloppy and anti-creative. But there are people out there who are using it to do things that are interesting... and dare we even say it? Even artistic? One of those people is writer, filmmaker and podcast host Aneri Shah. She's pioneered an AI voice bot that she uses to screen potential podcast guests—a process known in the business as "pre-interviewing"—to see if they're a fit for her show, "Not Quite." And, in an interesting twist, Aneri has painstakingly imbued this chatbot, which she calls "Gabby," with a proximate clone of her own personality. She says it's because people are more willing to open up to a sassy AI, because they don't feel judged by something that isn't human. But when Dusty is invited to meet Gabby, he uses the opportunity to probe all the uncomfortably existential questions the bot was designed to get other people to explore. And the results are interesting and surreal enough to raise some eyebrows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices