Just not enough to actually record a podcast, but generate a script and send it to an API to generate a (very recognisable) AI voiced podcast. It's literally called "Talk Python" with no humans talking.
Not sure if you're confusing with something else? "Talk Python to Me" is a long running podcast that has had a lot of definitely real humans on the show[0].
I am as confident as possible that it's not- a lot of the guests are fairly known figures in the open source world (Wes McKinney, Charlie Marsh, Ned Batchelder) and video footage of the podcasts are available.
The podcast has also been going for several years, before it would have been possible to generate audio podcasts with AI.
Joel, my podcast has been going for 10 years, I've done research and an interview nearly ever week over that time period resulting in over 500 episodes. It's not AI.
What you are referring to is the Readers' brief and you're taking it out of context. If you actually went to all of them, you would find this as the very first "track":
It clearly explains that this is an extra to the book, it's created with AI and meant to be fun. It makes minor mistakes but enjoy it if you like or just don't listen and read the book without.
Here is the transcript from that opening track in case you don't want to listen:
Hello and welcome to the Reader's Brief for the Talk Python in Production book. This is your author, Michael Kennedy. I am thrilled you're interested in the book.
This companion audio series features short, exploratory conversations around each chapter of the book. They typically range from two and a half to four minutes per chapter. You can listen to each chapter's Reader's Brief just before reading a chapter to help you get in the ideal mindset. Or you can listen afterward and let your mind wander and expand on the ideas covered in the chapter. It's all up to you. Once I neared completion of the book, I had been brainstorming how I could offer an audio version. However, there are sufficiently many code listings that are too important to the content to really support a word-for-word audio book. It would be rough to listen to me narrate a Nginx configuration file to you, for example.
Thus, I came up with the reader's brief idea. A conversation around topics of each chapter in a brief two to four minute format that adds to the book rather than a traditional spoken true audio book. I do want to set expectations a bit. The reader's briefs are spoken by AI. Very good ones, by the way. So you will hear an occasional misspoken acronym such as Nginx or SSH. But enjoy these for what they are and don't expect perfection. They're really interesting ideas and background stories and thoughts on each chapter.
I hope you find that they add value to your experience. I know they did to mine. Finally, I have added the necessary metadata to the MP3 files. You should be able to add them all to your music library and they will appear in a single album. MP3 file for all the chapters together and put chapter markers in that MP3 file. Pick which one you want. Thanks for the interest in my book. I'll be with you page by page as you learn from it. Cheers.
Thanks for the reply, unfortunately I've not heard of the podcast before, the only thing I see is the AI art and AI chat embedded on the page too. Just looked and sounded off. Appreciate that's not your intention, but it's how it looks to a person who's never heard of the podcast before.
Listened to it and yeah... not only is the voice obvious AI, it drops an "It's not just X — it's Y" within the first 20 seconds. Copy-pasted straight from GPT.
Likely safe to assume that everything on this site is AI generated, including the book.
If anyone else was confused, they're referring to the Audio Readers' Briefs. I didn't immediately recognize it as AI. To be honest the voice sounds exactly like my coworker responsible for doing our product video demonstrations.
I skipped through it and heard it pronounce nginx as en-gee-onix and only then did I realize it was fake.
You might want to mention this on the website as well, where it's definitely not clear. I also don't see how to navigate from the website to the introduction where it's explained.
That's a good point. I just redid the sample audio to include the opening section that adds that opening track that sets the stage with the positioning I put above.
