How man’s best friend became man’s favorite podcaster 

The general consensus among the public seems to be that AI use for creative work is not OK — except, apparently, when talking dogs are involved.

DogPack’s “pawdcast,” an AI-generated show hosted by talking dogs, has become an internet sensation and might just be Hollywood’s next big thing — it recently signed a (wholly uncontroversial) deal with talent agency WME to grow its brand, per Business Insider.

A real treat

The show is hosted by virtual good boys Goldie and Frenchie, who’ve gotten big off their dog-related humor, though they’ve recently expanded their content to highlight topics like rescue dogs and started bringing on real-life dogfluencers. 

Episodes are ~8-second clips produced using Google Veo 3.

In the few months since its debut, the show’s drawn 2m users across 20 countries to DogPack’s app, a social platform for dog owners, and gained 1m+ followers on Instagram and TikTok. 

WME plans to expand the schtick across television, brands, licensing and merchandising, and philanthropy. 

Meanwhile, other AI-generated pods…

… haven’t been nearly as successful. A slew of AI podcast generators have made it cheap and easy to churn out shows, but it’s mostly just slop.

• Inception Point AI, for example, produces 3k+ episodes per week, across 5k+ podcasts hosted by ~50 different AI personalities, at $1 per episode.
• They’re able to turn a profit, but “the podcasts aren’t any good,” Futurism writes, averaging few listeners, prone to glitching, and often boring.

So what makes talking dogs work?

Well, unlike “human” AI content creators, AI dogs are cute and they don’t steal jobs from real people or make you question your own humanity. 

Plus, “people don't like to feel like they're being tricked,” co-founder Dov Punski told BI. Compared to other AI personalities, “this is obviously not real.” 

• Most Americans (76%) say it’s important to be able to tell if something is AI-generated or not, but over half aren’t confident they can.  
• One of the few other popular AI podcasts is hosted by talking babies. The video-generation company behind it, Hedra, raised a $32m Series A in May.

What else sets DogPack apart from the slop: its human touch. 

The show’s creators write all of the concepts and scripts themselves, including charming dad-jokes (dog-jokes?) like this one: “She says it's rude to beg at the table, bro. She went on a second date just to get a free dinner." 

Hilarious. AI could never.