Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to the Community Podcast Initiative where we explore diverse and inclusive ways of audio storytelling.
Our goal is to connect community members through sound while providing an alternative for those underserved or misrepresented in traditional media.
The CPI is based out of Mount Royal University on Treaty 7 territory.
I'm your host at Emma Miller and in this episode we take a listen to a panel the CPI hosted in March of 2026 that brought journalists, podcasters and students together for a conversation regarding the ethics of journalistic podcasting and the inevitable implications of AI in the practice.
CPI Co Director Brad Clark leads the conversation with MRU Assistant Journalism Professor Gabriela Perdomo Paez, MRU 4th year broadcasting student Martin Maya Butler, and Director of Growth at Canadaland, Tony Wang.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Good afternoon everybody. I'm Brad Clark. I'm a Mount Royal University Broadcast and Journalism professor and a Co director here at the Community Podcast Initiative at Mount Royal University.
Welcome to our panel discussion today Ethics and Artificial Intelligence in Podcasting.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: Imagine going from a blank slate to a fully produced podcast episode in half the time thanks to AI. That's right. Today we're pulling back the curtain on how artificial intelligence is shaking up podcast creation.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: I'm Brad Clark and I'm thrilled to dive into this with you. If you've ever wished for more hours in your day or dreamt of automating the tedious parts of production, this episode is packed with what you need.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Well, that's AI's take on its use in podcasting. I asked it to put together an introduction for a podcast series about ethics and AI and podcasting, the subject of our panel, but that wasn't really where it went. I also didn't specify male or female hosts, or whether to use multiple hosts, or just a singular host for that matter. I could have followed up with some prompts to come up with something a lot more focused on ethics, but somehow this first version seemed to be more revealing. Our AI host's preoccupation with the dream of faster, easier production seems to parallel a fairly popular view of artificial intelligence generally, and you can understand why monetizing podcasts remains a huge challenge for audio creators. The question is, when is using AI ethical and when does it cross the line?
I don't really know. I have some ideas, but I certainly couldn't say for sure, and I'm not going to ask ChatGPT for an answer either. But we have assembled a panel here of smart people to try and fig figure it out. I'll introduce the panelists shortly, but first, today's event is coming to you from here in Mokinsis, more recently known as Calgary. This is Treaty 7 territory, home to generations of storytelling, knowledge, culture and history.
We're grateful to the hereditary keepers of these lands, the Niitsitapi, Iyethka, Nakoda, Sutina and Metis peoples. We also recognize the historical and ongoing oppression that many Indigenous cultures and nations still face.
We seek to decolonize storytelling by including wisdom, knowledge and perspectives in our teaching at MRU and in our content and events here at the Community Podcast Initiative. In that spirit, we've brought together three people with some insights into podcasting ethics and of course, podcasting ethics.
We have Dr. Gabriela Perdomo, who has worked as a journalist, educator and scholar in Latin America and Canada. She researches antimedia discourses and changing norms and practices in different journalism cultures. Her research also focuses on the intersection of journalism and podcasting. Gabriela is the co creator of the Spanish language podcast Periodemica, which highlights the life and scholarship of Latin American academics living in the diaspora. Tony Wang is the Director of Growth at Canadaland and leads strategies to expand the reach and impact of one of Canada's most influential independent media outlets. He's a former freelance documentary filmmaker and creative director at the nonprofit agency My Media Creative. Tony is based in Toronto and passionate about using media to inform, inspire and connect communities.
Maya Butler is a fourth year honours broadcasting student at Mount Royal and a producer at City News here in Calgary. She has a passion for storytelling, from directing documentaries to covering breaking news.
She's currently writing her undergraduate thesis on true crime podcasting and podcasting ethics. Her goal is to become an investigative reporter once she graduates. So welcome all three of you to our panel discussion. Really looking forward to hearing your insights on this very current topic in content and media production and creation. Maya, let's start with you and let's start Generally your honors research surveys the ethical considerations in the creation of podcasts. What do you see?
[00:05:41] Speaker D: Yeah, so the bulk of my research has been looking at true crime podcasts, comparing those produced from journalists with ones that were produced by podcasters. I'm looking at one that was produced by a comedian and her friend and really the main thing that I see right now one is the podcasting format as a whole is a wild west right now. I mean anybody can pretty much say anything. There's an extreme lack of ethical guidelines and two there's a widespread of misinformation, specifically in the true crime podcasting format. With the spread of misinformation and doing more harm to the victims and their Families than good.
So my research has really been about raising awareness to why we might want some of these ethical guidelines moving forward, not only in the true crime podcasting genre, but in the podcasting format as a whole. And why, you know, maybe using the journalistic code of ethics might be a good starting point, even if you're not a journalist wanting to produce a podcast to prevent this misinformation being spread.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Right. I mean, that's been. One of the beauties of the way podcasting has evolved is its independence and the ability of creators to basically just launch a podcast themselves. But the downside of that has been some of that ethical grounding that has come from podcast creators who started out with a journalistic background. Let me turn to Tony and Gabriela here for a minute. Gabriela, what's your sense of the way podcasters are incorporating ETH into their work?
[00:07:26] Speaker E: Yeah, thank you for having me. Very similar to Maya. What I'm seeing is just like such a huge difference in, in how people treat their ethical guidelines when. When it comes to producing podcasting. And there's a. There's a real difference between, like, having large newsrooms, which probably have a lot more kind of checks and balances, and also internal discussions about how to approach, for example, treatment of sources or even treatment of basic facts as opposed to people, you know, maybe even with excellent intentions, who just don't have that kind of. I don't know, maybe I want to call like, a hive mind or this community of people who want to double check or just produce some moments of pause and saying, maybe that's not how you should be treating that. And I see that difference in two things in particular. One is in treatment of sources.
Some storylines really makes you wonder. And this is not necessarily done great when it comes from journalists themselves either, by the way. But you see some. Some of these podcasts maybe setting up the victims, you know, in a way that is really not, you know, not respectful or. Or worse. Right.
So some storylines working against people as opposed to for them or with them. And also sometimes as. As Maya just brought up some of that very loose treatment of factual information. But, like, sometimes we just don't. We never get told where the facts were obtained or how.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Tony, at Candleland, you're so deeply immersed in podcasting, podcasting space. What's your sense of the way podcasters are considering ethics as they put stories together?
[00:09:06] Speaker C: Yeah, and thanks for having me as well here, Brad. Canadaland exists kind of at that intersection, right. Of both podcasting and also journalism. So at candaland things are a lot more clear cut. You know, we follow the ethical standards that any journalist would, but podcasting writ large, I forget if it was Maya or Gabriellette that said this, but it is a lot more of the Wild West, Right? It's a nascent medium, and crucially, it's a nascent medium that really prides itself on authenticity too. So my sense is that the way in which podcasters are incorporating ethics, like, they kind of aren't, at least not in any kind of broad, structural or like, like easily identifiable way. You know, it's something that we're struggling a lot with now. In any online content ecosystem, you're seeing similar ethical concerns crop up on YouTube, TikTok and stuff. And yeah, podcasting is no different.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Tony, what does the arrival of artificial intelligence meant to you and your team at Canadaland?
[00:10:05] Speaker C: It's changed a lot, and it's also changed very little. It's changed a lot in the sense that the way we think about our work, it's forced us to fundamentally evaluate all of the work that we do. What things can potentially be replaced by AI, what things can't or shouldn't be replaced by AI in a very real way. However, it really hasn't changed the way we do our work. We're super committed to not replacing any skilled labor. I mean, we can talk about this a bit later as well, because my colleague Max and I currently co authored a policy for AI usage at Canadaland. And so that governs a lot of the work we do. But yeah, in a lot of ways we're using the same tools, but sometimes those tools have little AI elements incorporated into them. Sometimes helpful, oftentimes not. Yeah, there are little ways in which we're folding it into our process, but one thing that we're very careful to do at Canadaland is not force anyone to use AI. And that sounds simple like, oh, just you don't have to use AI, that's fine. But it gets a little more complicated when you actually think about the fact that if a lot of people in our office are using AI, which they're not, but let's say a lot of people start using AI, folks who opt out of doing that if the pace of their work is slower, then there is a tacit or implicit pressure for them to use AI. And that's also something we want to avoid. We don't want to create a situation where you feel like by not using these tools that you're either not comfortable with for personal reasons or for reasons of credibility and trust. That you feel like you are lagging behind in some way.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that's an interesting point. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a relative recently who works in the communication field who was encouraged to use AI, but not too much. And then when she used some, was sort of questioned that it sort of read like AI. And so, like, there's. There's. I think a lot of people are still trying to navigate, you know, what is it? What does it mean to incorporate AI on different levels into the workflow? Gabriela, what does discussion of AI and podcasting sound like in academic circles?
[00:12:18] Speaker E: Yeah, so academically, I think there's the overarching issue of trust, right. And especially when it comes to journalism, I think the issues of trust come up in completely different aspects of AI. So a big one right now is voice cloning, right? So especially podcasting and journalism. Two things that when they intersect, they really are all about the human voice and that intimacy that you attain when you're listening to a podcast and when you're listening to someone telling you a story or telling you the news.
So the effects of voice cloning, I'm seeing a lot of research coming in based on that and trying to gauge, like, what are the impacts. So kind of critical looks at that. Obviously, the other. The other big one is the treatment of factual information. Just like in anything in journalism, we are seeing this kind of generation of news production through generative AI. And obviously that's a massive concern because as we know, like, AI is really just kind of scraping and rehashing existing information or inventing from those scraps, you know, creating sometimes false information and inventing information, hallucinations and all of that. So the issue of trust is absolutely huge.
And also a third aspect that I'm seeing is trying to see whether AI is going to have the unintended effect of just actually homogenizing or funneling the styles of podcasting in terms of voice format topics into a very narrow thing. So instead of having this expansion, innovation, and all things that are promised with the technology, actually what we might see is reinforcing of very narrow parameters, styles, hierarchies, et cetera. So those are. I would say those are some of the main concerns that I'm seeing specifically with podcasting and AI.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: There's already research coming out that is showing the way that media biases that influence academic knowledge generation are showing up in AI content. And even in the clip we listened to at the start, the voices of the synthetic podcast hosts were, you know, sounded awfully white, awfully Western, awfully North American.
So those sorts of voices, those sorts of perspectives showing up in content that ostensibly is supposed to be representing verified or factual information that. That becomes. That becomes problematic. I wanted to. To give each of you a chance to sort of address specific that you might have related to AI. And Maya thought I might start with you and maybe get a little bit of sense from your perspective as a student on how AI is being perceived and used and what you think of it.
[00:15:20] Speaker D: There's definitely a range of opinions on it here at school from different people. Some of the concerns that I have, along with some of my classmates, is we're a couple months from graduating, we're looking for opportunities, and we're seeing that a lot of these roles are to train AI for communication positions, which is scary and can generate a lot of fear amongst my peers and even myself, you know, so there's definitely a range of opinions. You know, some of us are totally anti AI. We refuse to use it. Some of us are kind of in the middle. We think it can be used as a tool, but really, I believe that AI should be used to do our dishes and our laundry and not our art. I think it's really important that we consider how we use it really to. To better, just like our work. I don't think AI and art should go together. I think the more creative side should stay creative, and I think we should be using it as a tool to help us. But beyond that, I mean, it's my opinion, so it's, you know, there's a range of opinions. There's that other side too, where people are fully embracing AI, you know, using it for brainstorming and enhancing, editing and stuff like that. But then there's also that risk of abuse of AI. And we've seen that in a few cases here at school where people are using it to do the entirety of their work, to write their essays.
Not so much in the video and the audio side yet, but it is a concern for credibility and privacy too. Like Gabriela mentioned, with the whole voice actors and voice cloning, you know, we're seeing that come up, which is. Which is another big concern environmentally as well. You know, there's billions of liters of water being used to cool these data centers. That has definitely been something that's been kind of swept under the rug online.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I can remember when some of the first AI generated podcast voices came out playing a clip of that for students in a class, and one of the students saying, well, got I enrolled in the broadcast program. I'm out of a job now, so I understand that concern.
Is there a consensus among students? Like what's sort of the range of views and AI use?
[00:17:46] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, it's pretty all over the place. I mean, I wouldn't even say one person has the exact same opinion about AI as the next. I think we're all navigating it together. When I started, I started in 2022. 2023 was really when it picked up. So we've really seen it take off. I think a lot of us didn't think it was going to advance or evolve as quickly as it has. So that's been something we've all kind of felt a bit afraid of. But really there's three different camps. There's groups who are like totally against it, won't use it for anything. They're, you know, that's where they stand. There's kind of in the middle a group where, you know, they use it as a tool. They use it to help. They believe that it can be used for certain things. And then there's a group that fully embraces it and is like, you know what? This is like let's, let's use it to, to its full, full advantage. But yeah, it's hard to say. But I do think there's, it's definitely varied in, in all of our opinions across the board here at school.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Right. Tony, for you, what really worries you? What really concerns you about AI?
[00:18:58] Speaker C: Yeah, before I get into that, just like something that you mentioned, Maya, about all these different camps. It's interesting that the way it breaks down in Canada. I recently learned that Canadians have some of the lowest trust levels of AI in the world. I think somewhere around 5th or 6th lowest traffic in the world out of the 40 odd countries that were in this study from last year. So I find that fascinating. And those statistics seem to bear out in the Canadaland audience as well. So I did a survey last year. I found.
I can't remember the exact figure off the top of my head, but ballpark was like somewhere from 70 to 80 kind of percent of our audience did not had negative sentiment around AI to segue into what you were asking, Brad. That's obviously a concern of mine if our audience doesn't like it. But there are instances where either the team wants to use it or we're experimenting with things like how do we square those two things.
I should also quickly mention that the views I'm expressing here are of course my own. They don't necessarily reflect the views of Canadaland. And I say that less because I'm about to drop some very controversial takes, but more so just because there's such a range of opinions, positive and negative in any workplace. I don't want to be the mouthpiece for all of that. But for my part, there's the obvious AI take in all of our jobs, but that I find almost a little boring as a concern just because it's more nebulous and it's feels kind of fear mongery. What I'm more concerned about are the more subtle, maybe more insidious ways in which AI can harm the job market.
And by that I mean things like de Skilling. There's a study recently about some doctors who. Two groups, like a group of doctors who were using AI to help some who weren't. And after several months of doing this, there was like a marked decrease in the day to day skills of the doctors who were relying on AI. That's not to say that there aren't some really exciting ways in which I can be used in the field. Right. But it's just one of those things to consider and balance in addition to deskilling. It's like the death of apprenticeship. This is huge.
Obviously in, in a lot of fields, specifically in fields like software programming and coding where. So I'm not a coder, but I from, from people that I've spoken to, it seems like AI is getting good enough to replace maybe like a junior engineer in some contexts. And that's really scary. Right, because. And the same thing in podcasting, like if AI can do a decent mix and master job and replace someone who's just starting out and learning those technical skills, the senior producers and engineers of tomorrow are going to have a hard time breaking into the market today.
One kind of concern that I want to echo that I think you mentioned, Gabriela, is yeah, just this, this flattening of the medium into a very sanitized or homogenous kind of sound and tone.
And that is a real, to me that that would be a huge death knell for, for the craft of podcasting. Because podcasting in its popularity in my estimation has largely has to do with the fact that it is such an intimate human first medium that establishes a sense of connection.
I have a background in cognitive science, so I don't want to go too deeply into the neuroscience here. But hearing specifically audio as a medium has such an inherent deep ability to connect folks, create parasocial relationships, et cetera, et cetera.
And even if we're not going the artsy kind of craft Argument. There's also the argument of, look, host read advertisements are like the most effective advertisements out there, period. And they work because it's a human host that you care about, that you trust, that you have built a parasocial relationship with. I don't think any of our sponsors would see as high conversions if it were a robot reading the same ad copy. It kind of undermines the whole point of it. But, yeah, those are just some that come to mind.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: You know, having been in this field for longer than I'd like to admit and thinking about the people who have set up studios in their basement to do voiceover work, that's their entire livelihood. And now you can digitally create an AI Morgan Freeman and have very, very rich narration.
In preparing for the event today, I was watching a YouTube seminar of someone demonstrating how to use AI for voice cloning in particular, and he put together a video segment where his voice was cloned and enhanced in this segment. And what was interesting about that is he had a pretty thick accent.
And through the process of using AI, it was quite. It was quite different. It was again, very North American. There was no accent at all.
And I worry a little bit about the loss of authenticity as well in the content that's generated as well. Gabriela, what are the principal concerns you have regards to AI use?
[00:24:33] Speaker E: I have a really big concern about the corporate aspect of AI. I think it's something that I know it sounds like, so, like, abstract, but I do think that we're not talking enough about how some of these technologies, they are being fed to us as these innocent, playful tools. But eventually, ultimately, what they do is they are also serving some pretty nefarious purposes and actors. Not everything is nefarious and not everything has to sound conspiratorial. But I think if the last few years have taught us anything, is that we really need to pay attention to the people who are behind some of these technologies. What are they pushing for? What is their ultimate goal? I feel that we really, really need to pay attention to the way that these technologies are being presented to us when in reality they are serving kind of like other purposes. So the fact that we need to kind of be aware of what are we playing with? Who are we, you know, what, what is this? Where is this really going? Right. The fact that we are being, for example, Maya, you just mentioned something that I find really concerning about all these young people being led into jobs where you have to train AI. We have seen already a lot of studies about, of course, as you would expect, people in Lower income countries and lower socioeconomic statuses where people are being paid nothing to train these AI technologies and having to be exposed to absolutely horrible content day in and day out, getting completely traumatized by these exposures. And obviously nobody is accountable or responsible for the well being of these workers who are being exploited into doing this kind of work. So I worry about that. I worry about the discourse about generative AI specifically being something that is inevitable, that we just need to.
That's it.
In education, we're gonna see our own university rolling out Gemini starting very soon across campus. And instead of being kind of critical about maybe we shouldn't be doing this. It's all about, well, just learn to live with it. This is it, this is the world, this is the future. A lot of employers also behaving this way. They're just kind of giving up. We're just rolling over and saying, well, this is inevitable. When we really haven't, you know, we just really haven't even had the time to think properly about this. And it's not that I'm against, I'm not like a blanket saying that this is awful. I think there's a lot of really cool uses. I'm sure there are. And I'm sure I still believe that people can find amazing and creative ways of using these technologies. But I worry about that sense of inevitability and that kind of prior compliance with like, well, that's it, like we just can't do anything about it. So that, that lack of agency is also very much a result, a result of the corporate push towards these things and the corporate discourse that's telling us that we don't have a choice. And I worry. The third thing I'd worry about is, well, aside from the environmental impact, which I'm actually is probably my biggest concern, but I also worry about disclosure, the fact that we are seeing already in audio production. And that's something that I love to hear more from Tony about. Because at what point do we just give up trying to disclose how much AI we're using and we become normalizing to the point that I think that's really when we're going to lose trust as journalists, as audio producers, when people stop asking or stop offering transparency in terms of how they used or whether they used any generative AI, whether any of their script was written by Gemini, or whether any of the research stemmed from just asking ChatGPT a bunch of prompts, right? Whether somebody's voice was actually cleaned off, their thick accent, for example, how do we stay in A space where we are being transparent as producers and as audiences.
How do we let people know that they should be demanding transparency in terms of how these producers are using? So I think those are kind of like my three main concerns is the corporate aspect and ownership of it. I find it very dangerous. The inevitability of discourse in general and the lack of disclosure, or my fear is that we're going to reach a tipping point where there's just like people are just not going to bother disclosing anymore that they're using it.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: That might be a good entree for you, Tony, to talk a little bit about the policy that you've put together at Canadaland that I expect is going to address some of those concerns.
[00:29:21] Speaker C: My colleague Max Collins and I, we co authored the Candidaland sort of guide to AI usage. And it was in response to staff and producers specifically just feeling kind of like, hey, I don't know where to draw certain lines. I don't know if there's any tools I'm expected to use or can't use. We went into this with the mindset of creating as clear as possible guardrails to allow people to use tools if they so choose, without, like I was mentioning earlier, without making anybody feel like they're forced to use these tools. And the golden rule of Canadaland's AI usage, and this is in our policy, is that it can never be used to replace skilled work. As a unionized company, that's obviously really important to us for obvious reasons. But what that does mean is that we can use AI when it comes to assisting with that skilled work. But the person who's using it needs to be employed. The thing that they're doing needs to be their profession. And the AI can only be a tool in assisting that. Now, that is a moving target as technology evolves.
Our policy acknowledges this and it leaves room for, you know, versions of this policy going forward to be updated to better reflect things, because it's just the technology is moving so quickly. But Gabriela, you asked about disclosure. That I think is maybe the most important thing for us is that we're always going to err on the side of disclosing too much rather than too little.
Again, I don't want to go too in depth on the policy because it's all public and available, but like, one of those is like a very clear guide on what you should be disclosing. And of course, anything related to, you know, voice cloning, even using Adobe Speech Enhanced to clean up a clip. We disclose all of that this was a bit of a point of contention among staff.
Not because we use AI a lot. In fact, I would say we use AI one in every, like 30 episodes. There'll be a tiny use of AI. It's very little that we use it. But even so, there was a bit of a discussion around how much disclosure is too much disclosure. And we definitely decided, okay, we're going to err on the side of doing it too much. That has come back to, I don't want to say bite us because obviously I think disclosure is important and I'm proud that we do it. But it's funny, people aren't used to that kind of transparency, as you noted, Gabriela. So, you know, one use case for us is we have so many episodes coming out every week, sometimes our fact checker will. There'll be like literally two words that need to be changed. But our host is at home having dinner with their family and they can't get back to the studio in time. It's like 9pm or something.
So with the host's consent, we use a voice clone to literally fix like two words of a sentence. Right? Because it didn't pass the fact check or someone misspoke and mispronounced somebody's name.
We'll always make that disclosure, but we'll get feedback being like, oh my God, I can't believe they used voice cloning. You know what I mean? So it's this thing of like, okay, we'll take that criticism. I'd rather take that criticism. Or we as a company feel we'd rather take that criticism than feel like we've hidden something or weren't fully transparent. Transparency is really important to us.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: Here at Canadaland, when I teach students about ethics and editing, something I say is that your editing can't change the meaning.
And think that's probably an approach that still works with AI, But I honestly kind of wonder if I need to think it through a little bit. I think the transparency piece though, helps quite a bit. Maya, what do you think needs to be done?
[00:33:17] Speaker D: I definitely think there needs to be more clear cut guidelines when it comes to AI in general, especially in podcasting. You know, I think there's this fear around school anyways where it's like everybody's very tight lipped about how they use AI. And you know, I think having these conversations are really important, but I definitely think some like legislation or some. Some more guidelines are definitely necessary. I did a corporate communications internship where I too was. Was told that I could use AI and then and then criticized for using it too much. So it's, it's all about, okay, well, we need to know how to use it. Where's the line? I think the line needs to be drawn more, more clearly in all industries, but especially in communications, because it's, it's super critical that we're not letting it affect our accuracy and credibility as especially working in news. You know, like, I definitely am very, very hesitant. Like, we have a strict policy not, not to use it. It's also like maintaining that trust with your audience and how do you manage that? So I think definitely some guidelines are what's necessary at this stage. Just with how quickly it's evolved and continues to evolve, I mean, it's shocking.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: Gabriela, what do you think needs to be done? Maybe, you know, in terms of who needs to lead this, what the role of educators is in this?
[00:34:48] Speaker E: Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of education, this is the first. This is going to be really important for us, especially as we are getting our younger, you know, our young people coming through us for education in journalism, pr, communications, broadcasting, all. All of those fields, information design, et cetera. So I think education is key and critical education, something that Tony mentioned that I actually think it's really. It also plays out not just in the workplace, but in education settings is the deskilling. So one of my principal concerns at the beginning, when this whole thing was kind of exploding in popularity is like, how do you know what a good assignment looks like when you're prompting ChatGPT to write your essay for you or to answer all these questions about maybe, you know, I told you to write a reflection about a movie about journalism. How do you know that those are good answers when you have never learned to begin with, like, what a good answer looks like when you haven't gone through the process of writing down a reflection about a topic in media. Right. Or something like that. So that is something that I think as educators, we just need to be. Be so constantly critical, constantly reflexive about this. One thing that gives me a little bit of hope that Maya said is I'm actually, and, and I see that in, in, in my classrooms as well, students are, are all over the place in terms of how they feel about AI And I find that very healthy. I think that's good. It just means that we haven't all bought into the. Oh, we just need to embrace. Embrace this uncritically and just go for it. You know, there's always going to be. People feel like trailblazers who want to use the technology and understand it inside and out and that. I understand that too. And I think there's definitely a place for that. And we kind of need the full range. We need the skeptics and we need the cautious people and we need the trailblazers who are going to break everything for us and then show us, you know, maybe what we shouldn't have done. I just hope that's not the camp, that, that, that grows too fast. So, yeah, from education, I mean, we do so much about it. And I think one of the, you know, we're talking about podcasting, production and like journalism in podcasting, which is what so many of us do. And I think that it is a question of focus on quality. Right. We can't forget that as much as we're being inundated with AI slop in the audio world, we're also, you know, there's a lot of human slop. Like, let's just be honest, there's a lot of really poor quality stuff out there. And that stuff shouldn't see the light of day either. So I think that just kind of, in so many ways, journalism education has to just go back. And it is actually already, and not just me, but so many other people are just going back to, you know what, there's so much stuff out there. Let's just go back to focusing on the basics.
Connect with your sources, respect your sources, be transparent about your methods, be transparent about where you got your facts. Be okay correcting if something is wrong. Accept that not everybody sounds the same way. You know, I'm very disturbed with this, like, cleanliness of like, accentless world.
To my point earlier about flattening of.
Of experiences because that's. We lose so much with that. So if you are encouraging people to, you know, students, go out, connect with different people, understand that people have different points of views, that authenticity looks different for different people, that it's fine if someone's like, maybe idioms are not perfect for your news clip or for your audio, but there's ways of playing around that while still being respectful and honoring people's unique qualities. Right? So I would just say, like, let's not forget that there's a lot of poor quality stuff produced by humans entirely. It's not just the bots or the chat bots, it's also us. So we just to need, need to maintain a high quality in our education.
[00:38:49] Speaker B: I would say, yeah, I can write some real crap.
Left to my own devices, we all can.
Tony, I just wanted to give you a chance to kind of Respond to that same query a little bit. And that's what needs to be done. Who needs to be leading this? I mean, should we be storming Parliament Hill with pitchforks and torches demanding legislation?
[00:39:14] Speaker C: Oh, man.
Why do I have to answer this version of the question?
Well, in a perfect world, I do think legislation, regulation is an order. It's just that it's such a rapidly evolving technology that I think government is and will continue to struggle to handle.
And so for better or for worse, this is not necessarily my preference. But I think just realistically, there will have to be grassroots initiatives and movements to keep these things in check in the absence of that kind of regulation. In terms of generally what we should do, I'll keep it brief because Maya and Gabriela have done excellent jobs answering this question. I don't have too much more to add, but yeah, I want to second what you said, Gabrielle, about education. It's so important. I mean, I've been banging the drum about media literacy basically my whole career. It's such an important skill to have. Like, you know, I used to work at a creative agency. We would work for nonprofits and social impact groups and that kind of thing.
And like understanding the mechanics of advertising and the machinery that companies like, you know, Coca Cola can spend billions and billions of dollars on to change public opinion and all this stuff. Like, these are the kinds of skills that need to be more widely understood by the general public, by consumers also. Again, I don't think I'm saying anything new here, but like, don't drink the Kool Aid, don't. None of this is inevitable. I love what you said there, Gabriela. Like our unique qualities, the way you speak, your idiosyncrasies, those are the things that make your podcast sticky and interesting and scrubbed of all of its unique qualities. It's just like this formless kind of aerodynamic package that just slides in one ear and out the other. Right? So focus on, on what makes you special and sticky. I don't want to sound too corny. This is becoming like a self help thing. I. I think lastly, I'll just say there are already some people taking those first steps. I want to shout out this, this great website I found the other week called Should I Disclose AI? And it's made by Alberto Bertella, who's like the co founder of RSS.com and it's like a very simple quiz. You just hit yes or no and it'll tell you whether or not it thinks you should disclose the AI use in your podcast. I'm not necessarily endorsing the site or saying that I agree with its conclusions, but like, I'm glad to see that there are leaders in the field that are taking these steps and putting out tools to help podcasters big and small navigate these kind of muddy waters and wild west or whatever metaphors you want to throw out there. But yeah, I'll leave it at that.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. I hadn't heard of that. That's potentially a useful tool, I think, to at least get discussion and get people thinking and knowing that there are places to go to for a bit of guidance and help. Thanks so much to all our panelists, Tony Wang, Maya Butler, Gabriela Perdomo. Really appreciate everybody for joining us for this event this afternoon. You can find more information about the Community Podcast Initiative at our website, the PodcastStudio CA.
My name is Brad Clark and thanks again for joining us.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: That was cpi co director and mru journalism professor brad clark with mru assistant journalism professor gabriela perdomo paez, mru 4th year broadcasting student maya butler and director of growth at canadaland, tony wang.
I'm Emma Miller and thanks for listening to the Community Podcast Initiative.
CPI focuses on audio storytelling as a way to better include underrepresented voices.
Our podcast is produced on the homeland of the Niitsitapi, or the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Ithka Estonia Coda Nation and the Sutina Nation. This land is also home to the Metis Nation of Alberta districts 5 and 6.
As media creators, we strive to uplift the voices of Indigenous peoples while strengthening our commitment to diverse and inclusive audio storytelling.
You can learn more about the cpi@thepodcaststudio ca or on social media at communitypod yyc. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time.
