Best AI Tools for Podcasting
Audio production is another area that AI is looking to revolutionize, so podcast creators are turning to these smart tools to speed up and streamline production.
These tools can do many things with audio files, some of which look nothing short of amazing.
For instance, there are AI tools that can remove background music and noise, as well as those that can separate all sound to different channels — so you can produce the sounds from the ground up.
Perhaps even more impressive are text-to-speech tools that let anyone “find” their voice by simply writing or pasting the text and then selecting the kind of voice they want that text to “read.”
Here are some of the AI tools that make podcast creation easier and even better:
Podcastle
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Easy to use, yet powerful with studio-level quality recording
- Creating a digital copy of your own voice is pretty cool
- Especially great for podcast newbies
- Where's the Android app?
- AI tools are not included in the free plan
Podcastle is an AI-powered audio and video creation platform that helps professional and amateur podcasters create, edit and distribute production-quality podcasts. In that sense, the company behind the tool aims to democratize access to broadcast storytelling through easy-to-use tools that are professional yet fun.
Beyond audio and video recording capabilities, Podcastle features an online audio editor, Magic Dust for removing background noise, Revoice (to create a digital copy of your own voice), text-to-speech capabilities, silence removal, and a hosting hub, which is used for hosting and distribution of your content. Finally, there’s the iOS app offering a professional quality audio recorder for iPhone users. As of September 2023, the Android version is still not available.
In other words, Podcastle offers an entire creator toolkit that is easy to use yet can produce exceptional quality audio and video recordings on a web-based platform. So, if you ever thought of launching your own podcast — or could use some help from AI — give Podcastle a try. Chances are it will make life easier for you.
Resemble AI
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Support for more than 30 languages
- You can convert your voice into any language
- Over 50 voices available from the Marketplace
- Scammers and robocall operators love it, too
Resemble AI is a text-to-speech tool that creates human-like voices using deep learning to produce realistic speech synthesis. As such, the service is meant to be used for various purposes, including in/for call centers, smart assistants, advertisements, and entertainment.
It offers text-to-speech, speech-to-speech, neural audio editing, language dubbing, emotions, real-time voice cloning, localizing, and Resemble Fill capabilities. Resemble also provides an API for developers to integrate these capabilities into their apps.
As of May 2023, users generated more than 2,000,000 minutes of audio per month on Resemble.
Among its best-known clients are the World Bank Group, Netflix, Leo Burnett, and Boingo, to name a few.
Play.ht
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Recognized and used by some the biggest companies in the world
- Top rated service across Trustpilot, G2, and AppSumo
- Support for almost 150 languages and accents
- Some folks have reported problems with customer service
Play.ht is an AI-enabled text-to-speech service that lets users create ultra-realistic voiceovers in multiple languages. As such, it is used in video creation, e-learning programs, podcasts, IVR systems, and more. The result can be downloaded as MP3 and WAV audio files.
The service also offers collaboration features, enabling entire teams to collaborate, share and create audio files together.
As of May 2023, Play.ht has a library of more than 900 natural-sounding AI-generated voices with humanlike intonation in 142 languages and accents powered by machine learning technology.
The service is used by both small and medium companies. Some of Play.ht’s notable customers include giants like Verizon, Xerox, Salesforce, Aruba, Hyundai, and Samsung, to name a few.
Speechify
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Very handy for going through long texts you would rather listen than read
- Mobile apps make Speechify accessible while on the go
- Useful for writers who could use it for editing
- Some voices sound like robots, and you can tell it's an AI
Speechify is an AI-powered text-to-speech application designed to transform written text into spoken words. It enables users to “listen” to documents, articles, PDFs, emails, and any other text they would usually read. This technology is particularly handy for people who want to consume text-based content while on the go or while multitasking. It is also highly beneficial for individuals with reading difficulties or visual impairments.
Speechify offers different features depending on the platform. For instance, there is a Google Chrome extension you can use to turn any text viewed in the browser into a natural-sounding voice. This is very cool when you want to listen to articles or documents online.
Then there’s the Speechify app for iOS that allows users to listen to any text on their iPhone, iPad, or through Safari. This can come in particularly useful while commuting, working out, or doing chores around the house. Needless to say, the Android app works in a similar fashion.
It is worth adding that the benefits of using Speechify go beyond mere convenience. By converting text to speech, users can boost their understanding and focus, as well as retain more information from the content they consume. This makes it a valuable tool for learners. Plus, you get to use it in the gym, while strolling in the park, or while relaxing on the couch.
Also, Speechify makes the editing process faster for writers, letting them hear errors and fix them immediately. And unsurprisingly, Speechify has over 20 million downloads.
ElevenLabs by ElevenLabs Inc.
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Make one person speak in the voice of another with ease
- There are voice profiles that can laugh when needed
- The pricing is reasonable, and you can even try it for free
- We would like to see a few more controls on the output
ElevenLabs dubs its product to offer the “most realistic and versatile AI speech software, ever” — delivering rich and lifelike voices to creators and publishers. You can test that claim right on the homepage of their website.
The company’s Speech Synthesis is powered by their proprietary deep learning model to allow users to voice anything from a single sentence to a whole book at a fraction of the time and cost traditionally involved in recording.
This creation process happens inside ElevenLabs’ Voice Lab, which lets users clone voices from samples, clone their own voice, or design entirely new synthetic voices from scratch.
The tool is meant, among other things, to help businesses grow their audiences by expanding into audio. In that sense, it lets them quickly generate top-quality spoken audio in any voice, with the underlying algorithms rendering human intonation and inflections with rock-solid fidelity and adjustments based on context.
ElevenLabs is used for storytelling, reading news articles, and audiobooks.
What can AI tools for podcasting do for you?
The main selling point of all of these tools is that they speed things up while enabling new functionalities that were not possible without artificial intelligence. Here are some of the things AI can do for you and your podcast:
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Music background removal
AI can detect what the audio file is all about and separate multiple tracks automatically. From that point on, you can use these tools to remove the background noise or any other sound that you want to remove. It’s like bringing you two steps back in audio production.
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Text-to-speech
We have seen a few amazing text-to-speech tools that let you enter your text (or copy/paste it), select a virtual character that will read it, and finally hear it being read by that character. This is very handy for non-native speakers of some languages. This brings us to the next point…
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Multi-language support
Many of these services are not limited to English and can “sing along” in many other languages, in some cases even more than 100 different languages, accents, and dialects. From what we have seen, the more “popular” languages are better “covered” as their models have been trained on more data (different voices).
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Edit with text
Once you get an audio file you want to use on your podcast, you can further edit it with text. That’s right, we have seen some tools that let you explain to the AI what you want to do with audio, and it will “convert” your explanation into an audio file edit. Talk about intelligence.
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Create podcast feeds
Some of these tools include features that are specially made for podcast creators and can package multiple audio files into a feed (RSS) that can then be submitted to popular aggregators and platforms like iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud, and Google Podcasts.
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Collaboration
Finally, it’s worth noting that many of these tools are created with teams in mind – allowing multiple users to contribute to the podcast editing/creation process. For instance, one member of the team could be in charge of clearing out the background sound, whereas the other may be responsible for the main audio (actual talk).
As we noted above, AI can add a lot to the podcast creation process – streamlining some of the existing operations while enabling entirely new features. And some of those features would be hard, if not impossible, without the use of AI. Pretty cool.