SermonAudio: AI Generated Podcast

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast making Theology Central. Good afternoon, everyone. It is Thursday, April tenth, twenty twenty five. It is currently one fifty pm Central Time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Now, one of the major things we've been talking about in twenty twenty five is artificial intelligence. And I reference artificial intelligence and message after message after message because I'm constantly using it to help create outlines or help create a script, or help me write a narrative or whatever I'm attempting to do. I'm using AI constantly, and we have been talking about it.

0:53 I've been talking about AI versus sermons that people write, AI versus the church, just a lot of conversations about artificial intelligence. So it came as somewhat of a shock to me that just a few minutes ago I stumbled upon something and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, where did this come from? How did I miss this? Is this what it sounds like? What actually is going on? So I'm going to need all of you to be detectives and start doing some research to try to find out exactly what's going on, because we don't get much of a description here. But here's what you need to do. Grab your sermon Audio app. Either we can call it the Sermons two point oh app, the Sermon's three point oh app, the Sermons three point one app, the Sermons by Sermonadio app. Just the sermon Audio app. Okay, there's been so many different ways it's been referenced to. I don't even know the correct way anymore. But get this sermon Audio app. Oh and if you haven't updated it, do the update. There's been an update release which makes like if you go to Discovery and you go down to the devotionals, you'll see it's all nice and improved.

2:02 It doesn't open to the website. It opens up in the app. You have the Morning, the Evening, and then Faith Checkbook. All of it's right there. So I love that. I'm very I mean I haven't gone through all of the updates and all the things that they've done where they continue to work and continue to improve the Sermonadio app so that you have access to millions of sermons, about five to six thousand added a day or a week, I should say, and you should, you know, be utilizing it as much as possible. So I was. I was just looking around because I'm like, well, I always tell everyone we should use it, and there's times I'm not using it or looking at it. So I'm like, well, let me look around. See what's going on on the sermonadio app today. What interesting things can I find? What frustrating things can I stumble up on? What things will I agree with? What things will I disagree with? And I found deep Dive. Oh, deep dive. That sounds interesting.

2:57 A deep dive always had a deep dive into theol, a deep dive into scripture, a deep dive into church history. What is this? It is entitled Deep Dive with the Digital Duo. Deep Dive with the Digital Duo. And I'm like, that's kind of an interesting you know, that's that's not something that sounds somewhat interesting. Deep Dive with the Digital Duo. I'm like, I want, what is this about? And then there's there's like a little thumbnail picture of a man and a woman. They both have headphones on, right, And I'm like, okay, so it's it's it looks like it's a podcast and it does the typical host and co hosts format that so many podcasts follow. You got to have the host and the co host and then their little banter back and forth. And people love that. They love that. It's very popular and very common. So I'm like, okay, all right.

3:48 The the artwork looks pretty cool. It's got a microphone, which is some people. A lot of times people will tell you that for a podcast, don't put an image of a microphone because it's to cliche. I still like the idea. I still think it looks cool. But so it's a kind of a gray background white lettering Deep Dive with the Digital Duo. There's the microphone. To the left, there's a little picture of them, the man and the woman. And I'm like, okay, I've seen them. I've seen this a podcast, but I don't think i've listened to her. Maybe I listened to one, and I'm like, okay. For whatever reason, I didn't give it much thought. But then I looked at this, and then I looked at the description Deep Dive with Digital Duo twenty two sermons, and then look at the description Tune in for an upbeat AI generated podcast where digital host dive into the latest news and updates from sermon audio with energy, insight and a touch of wit. I'm like, well, wait wait wait, wait wait wait wait, so is this whole thing AI I generated not just the words but the host are actually it's AI speaking. Now. I gave you an example of that of you know, if I paid a certain amount of money, I can get AI generated podcast episodes for me where the voice speaks. But the voice it was very I mean, it sounded good, but it was

5:20 just kind of this, you know, almost like this direct. The pacing of it wasn't great, is what I'm trying to say. It's just like very like did it's like whoa, how about some pausitives or some there? There was some things and that about it that wasn't great. But if you kept working with it, and I kept, you know, playing with it, then probably I could make it even better. But of course, the amount of money to get that to work, I don't know if it was ultimately worth it, but it would have been interesting to be able to provide you know, content around the clock. Right, I can do a broadcast, AI can do five broadcasts. I can come back and yeah, I could make it twenty four to seven. So The idea that the technology is out there and it will become more and more available and it will get better and better and better is intriguing to me. Right, at some point then people can be sending their mean comments not to the host, the human host.

6:12 They can be sending it to the AI host. Right, Hey, you may be artificial intelligence, but you're an idiot, and I disagree because everything you said you're wrong. It'll be wonderful Christians will be arguing with AI podcast hosts, right, That'll be that'll be fascinating, telling them how wrong they are. And I'm being a little bit sarcastic because just about what ten minutes ago, someone left a not nice comment on YouTube about me. So, but I'm like, okay, now you can send it to AI. So I was like, well is this AI? Is this actually the host or artificial intelligence? What's going on here? So? I want what we're gonna do is I'm going to play a little bit of this. I downloaded two episodes just immediately and I up and I uploaded them to my studio software.

6:55 The first one is podcast features Conversation, Podcast Features Conversation. Now what it appears, this is what it's looking like. To me, this is AI generated, and sermon Audio is like, Hey, we can have this AI generate a podcast updating people about news with sermonadio, new features, new things like that, And I'm like, okay, that's that's that's that's really cool. They they could also again, I I would like to suggest this, if you're gonna use AI, you can create your own AI now kind of like your own AI DJ for the sermonadio radio, where AI can introduce the sermons or introduce a you know, three or four sermons in a row about a particular topic. And maybe you can open up a sermonadio radio to be much more pulling from everything other than a very very very very very very small group of broadcasters. Allow any broadcaster that has content on sermonadio for their content to possibly show up on sermonadio radio and then have it curated almost by AI. Hey, AI today, find me five sermons on the sermonadio platform about this subject and it says here we go boom, all right, and then have AI generate the announcing. Hey, for the next you know, two or three hours, we're going to be playing five sermons on the God's omniscience something along those lines or on Isaiah

8:26 chapter forty, whatever the case may be. So but I so I'm sitting here trying to figure this out. So here again, I want you to take the sermon Audio app. Look for Deep Dive with the digital duo, tune in, and then again here's the description. Tune in for an upbeat AI generated podcast where digital hosts dive into the latest news and updates from sermonadio with energy, insight and a touch of wit. Now, hey, Sermonadio, you could have just paid me to do this. I could have done it for you, right, I could have done it for you, and I would have had far more energy, far more upbeat, and I'm far more wittier. I have far more wit than your AI. But is this AI? Is this AI taking over? Is this the end of sermon Audio? Are all this pastor is going to be replaced by AI?

9:14 On some ways? That may be a good thing. But okay, so let's let's listen to this. You tell me what's going on here. That again, that's that's the entire description, because I'm trying to go Wait a minute, so it's all of this just AI. And if it is, well, do you like the way they sound. Do you dislike the way they sound? I need more information, but here we go. Here's the one. This was. This is from April to fourth, twenty twenty five. April the fourth, twenty twenty five, I had sixty one downloads, So it's doing really really good podcast feature conversation. That's interesting that an episode about podcast has sixty one downloads and well articles conversation has one hundred and twenty two, right, but the the other ones are lower. But then they were put published later, so I don't know. I don't know if it's on pace with their normal downloads or not. I just I thought, oh, well, maybe people are interested in podcasts on sermona Audio. That would be that would be good.

10:12 Maybe I can go in all kinds of different directions, but we want to know what's going on here again deep dive with the digital duo. Tune in for an upbeat AI generated podcast. That the digital duo. So maybe they're not actual people, they're just digital AI. Well you find out here we. Go, all right, so today we're diving into something pretty interesting. Back in July of twenty twenty one, Sermon Audio made this announcement, okay about full podcasting support on their platform. Right now, we've got their whole article right here laying out all the details of these new features, and what we really want to do is break down what this means for people, for those of us who listened to sermons online and those who might even be putting them out there.

11:03 Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, Sermon Audio is such a big name when it comes to audio sermons, So them really leaning into podcasting, you know, it's a big deal for anyone involved in that world. Okay, so let's jump right in. Yeah, the article kind of reminds us, like, you know, podcasting as we know it today really took off in the early two thousands, Yeah, with the iPod and everything, and obviously we've seen a resurgence of. Popularity, huge resurgence. So it makes sense for a platform like Sermon Audio, yeah, with all its history to really kind of, you know, lean into this format. Yeah, especially since they've been supporting podcasting almost since day one. Oh really, yeah, it says right here they've they've always had some level of support for it.

11:45 Wow. So this isn't you know, them just jumping on a new trend. It's more like a major expansion of what they already offered. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So the big news here is that they're rolling out full native support for customizable podcasts. Yeah, and they're making this available to all their broadcasters. Right. That sounds like a pretty significant game changer definitely. So what are like the key things they're highlighting as improvements. Well, they're really pushing a couple big updates. Okay. The first one is they're now hosting podcasts directly on the Sermon audio platform itself. Oh that's cool. Yeah, so for creators that just streamlines things so much. Yeah. Absolutely. And the second thing is customization. Oh wow, Yeah, they're giving you options to customize your album art and descriptions. Yeah.

12:33 That's huge, really. Important for you know, standing out from the crowd. Absolutely. Yeah. You definitely want to make sure people are drawn to your content visually as well as just the content itself. Absolutely. So what else did out to you as you're reading to this article? You know, it's the accessibility for listeners that really impressed me. Oh yeah, they added these really convenient subscribe buttons okay, which makes it super easy for people to follow your podcasts. Yeah, and maybe the biggest changes they're giving each podcast show its own dedicated landing page. No way. Yeah, they even included a sample link in the article so you can see how they look. I'll have to check that out. Yeah, it's really impressive, professional and super easy to share.

13:15 That makes a lot of sense. Imagine just sending someone a link directly to your podcast, right, It just makes everything so much simpler. Yeah, a dedicated landing page. That's, like you said, a huge step forward for discoverability and shareability. Huge. Now, one thing I did notice in the article, m h, they're really drawing a distinction between a regular sermon series on Sermon Audio and these dedicated podcasts. So what's the big difference there for the user? That's a great question, and the article is really clear on that. The main differences are those subscribe buttons we talked about. Those are just for the podcasts, okay, And then they get better visibility on what Sermon Audio calls solo sites okay, which are basically these customizable websites broadcasters can build.

13:58 Oh wow. And of course there's the dedicated landing pages, which the sermon series don't have, gotcha. So they're really being treated as like a separate, distinct content type exactly. What about the branding aspect of things. Well, both formats, sermon series and podcasts can use custom album art. Okay. They actually give some examples in the article if you need some inspiration, that's cool. And they both let you create custom descriptions too. Okay, So creators have a lot of control over how they present their audio. That's really important I think for you know, keeping that consistent brand. Now I could take apart some of the things they are saying, because I already have some disagreements. But okay, and I'll explain why in a minute. Is that is that AI? I think it's AI, And now that I'm listening to it, I think maybe the first time I clicked on it, I'm like, oh, it's a guy and a girl and it's doing the host co hosting. Okay, I kind of just figured out what it was. I don't even remember when I first discovered or stumbled upon the digital duo. If I look for the digital duo, hang on, me see here the digital duo, hang on opening up digital duo speaker. Yeah, let's see here. I don't know when with the first time, I don't know which one. I think it was back in March when I first stumbled upon it, and I think it was like just a quick play and like, Okay, I get what they're doing, but I get I didn't realize at the time it was completely AI generated, or maybe I wasn't paying attention. I mean, I click on so many different things on the sermonadio app listening at any given moment.

15:31 I don't always like read every detail. So but at first I'm I obviously didn't catch on. Now that I'm listening to that, that's that's that's clearly AI. That's clearly AI. And just well you maybe asking what do you disagree with? I just think it's ridiculous now in twenty twenty five to say, well, these are sermons, these are podcasts. There's no there's no meaningful distinction. Both both things are being uploaded to the Internet and they have attached to it an RSS feed and which you can access that content. There's all these churches on sermon audio. I just go and grab their RSS feed, Go to any podcasting app, insert the RSS feed and subscribe to it. It's subscribed to as a podcast. If your audio has an RSS feed that can be grabbed by any podcast app, then guess what. It's a it's a podcast. You're saying, No, it's a sermon, it's a sermon. You're a podcaster. Okay, you're a podcaster. You're just your content's being produced behind a pulpit with a lapel mic in front of a live audience versus maybe a the type of mike I'm speaking into a in a room. It doesn't matter. It's still audio content being produced that is now easily accessible via an RSS feed. To me, that's it's by definition, it's a podcast. So you can try to draw a distinction.

16:53 This is and even the sermons series. Once you take the sermon turn it into a series, you can you still have your own series. You can also include your own artwork. I don't think that's you. I think you can do that even if it's not a podcast. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd have to go look. But if if you're it, then then label your sermon series podcast okay, And then you can take that sermon series and you label a podcast. Let's say it's going to be a four year series on the Book of Romans. Turn it into a podcast, and then you can go take that podcast separate from your church's podcast. And make it its own podcast available on all the platforms like Apple or you know, Apple podcasting app, Spotify and all the others. You just have to go and load it in as its own separate podcast. So there's all all kinds of things you can do. But I mean, it's still a sermon series, but it's a podcast. It's the same thing. So but yeah, there you have it. I'll just let you hear just a little bit more of this.

17:53 Yeah. Absolutely. Now, for someone who's already on sermon audio and they've got, you know, all these sermon series built up, is it a to convert them to this new podcast format? From what they say in the article, it's super easy, really, Yeah, you can convert an existing series into a podcast with like one click. It's all done in the series manager in your account dashboard. So it sounds very user friendly. Extremely so, I guess wrapping up this whole deep dive into this Sermon Audio announcement, it seems like they're really stepping up their game when it comes to podcasting. Yeah, they're giving both creators and listeners a much more integrated and customizable experience exactly.

18:35 And if you're someone who loves listening to sermons in podcast format. Yeah, this update probably means you're going to have even more content to choose from. That's awesome. And if you're creating the content, well SERMONADI is giving you a more powerful platform. Yeah, with all these great features exactly. And here's something to really think about. You know, how might this deeper integration of these podcast specific tools on a platform dedicated to you know, religious audio. How might that change the way people find and share and engage with this kind of content in the future. It's really fascinating to consider. Really, it's a big development in this space. So yeah, thanks for joining me for this deep dive.

19:17 Yeah, my pleasure. It was great breaking this down absolutely until next time. See ya. Bye. There you have it. I don't know how much of a deep dive that was, because if I was breaking that down, it would go it would go five hours. But that's probably why AI is better. It was able to do it in a very succinct, very quick way. A total of I don't even know how many total minutes. That thing was five minutes and twenty four seconds. So it could do it in five minutes and twenty four seconds, and I could do it in five months in twenty four days. Okay, so but it sounds like it's AI. So here's the question, sermon audio. That's what I think that sermon audio is the one who creates that. So if sermon audio can create a podcast about what's going on on sermonaudio utilizing AI, at what point, I mean, we're right there, we're on the edge of the cliff.

20:13 At what point does AI replace me, replace your pastor replace all pastors. Now I know some of you will push back, but I'm just saying, at some point AI can produce the podcast, can produce the sermon, can preach the sermon. He said, Well, you're still got to have people coming to church, so you're still going to need someone to stand there. Okay, well congratulations. But then ultimately your pastor could literally produce sermons Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, maybe two or three a day and just have AI preach it and upload it to sermonadio or any other platform. So the pastor still may be preaching on Sunday, but the rest of the week the AI generated messages, AI generated devotionals, AI generated the logical lectures church. I mean, at some point AI I mean, we've already demonstrated AI can put together a better sermon than a person can in five seconds. Every single time. AI destroys people in my estimation, I mean they I mean, AI can rip a sermon apart in seconds and tell you everything is wrong with it. So if AI can do that, I mean, I've got questions there. So what do you think? What do you think about the digital duo? It sounds pretty I mean there's a little pacing issue there, kind of kind of kind of well. I mean, even when people talk like that, they kind of cut each other off.

21:39 So maybe some of the responses are wow, are oh or maybe a little a little kind of over the top because you know, but all right, maybe but I'm over the top. So maybe AI is just better than everyone. But that's the digital duo. Go look, go look it up on the sermon Audio app, like right now, don't waste a second. Go look it up deep dive with the digital duo. Look look it up, and yeah, it's from Sermonadio themselves. It's it's sermon Audio is the broadcaster. So yeah, there, and then you can look at the little thumbnail art. I'm assuming that's generated by AI. And AI decided that's the way they look. I guess I don't.

22:21 I don't know. I didn't catch all of this. I just stumbled upon realizing, wait a minute, this is a AI generated podcast by sermon Audio. So you go look at it and you tell me what you think, all right, And that's deep Dive with the digital duo. Deep Dive with the digital duo Sermonadio. Tune in for an upbeat AI generated podcast where digital hosts dive into the latest news and a digital host so clearly it's AI dive into the latest news and updates from Sermonati with energy and insight and a touch of wit. What do you think about this development? What does it say? Whatever you think about them, I need you to look forward, right, look to the future. Right. AI is only going to get better. It's only going to get better. It's only going to sound more natural. It's only going to get better.

23:21 I'm telling you already. The AI program I was messing around with to to start trying to create audio podcasts. I asked it to. I gave them. I gave it all of like multiple episodes of my podcast so it could listen to my voice. And then it started generating a podcast that sounded pretty close to me. It wasn't perfect, but at times I was like, whoa, that sounds just like me. And then there were other times like, ah, that's a little off. But if it gets a little bit better, that means AI would be able to create a podcast in my style, with my voice and could produce content at a rate that no human being could ever come up with. There, what is even my point in existing telling you that there's that we've reached. I've already think when we've reached a point, there's no point in Pastor's writing sermons. AI can write them better. There really is no point Night and Pastor's preaching sermons because AI is going to be able to preach them better.

24:24 It's just like, I don't know, we're not needed anymore. I know, I look, I think we're right there in the air. I know we're not there yet. I know you're gonna be thinking, well, that's a little hyperbolic. I think you're being you're being too you know, sensational maybe, But I just think we're right there. This is what I've been talking about, and that's a pretty good example. I don't know what tool they use, but that sounds pretty good. So all right, I just want to just it was very impromptu. I stumbled upon it, wanted to tell you about it. Go check it out, go listen to it, deep dive with the Digital Duo. Follow it so that anytime they add new stuff, it will be in your feed on the Sermonadio app. And there we go, and hey, Sermonadio, if you want to really lean into podcasts, you want to really support podcasts, therefore making sermonadio a podcasting app. All podcasting apps have notifications. I cannot stress that enough. They have notifications, all right, So, and that's why I usually take content from Sermonadio, grab the RSS feed, go to a podcasting app and sert it there, and then I'll get notifications whenever they add new content. Now I know I can the good thing the feedtab. At least I can open the app, go to the feedtab and look for the new notification of this stuff. But I'm telling you, when you get a notification on your device and like, oh that's an interesting title, let me click on that now, versus going opening the app, going to the feed and then scrolling through the feed to

25:54 see what new stuff is there. But all right, thanks listening. That's it, You're like, that's all you have to say, that's all I have to say. I just wanted everyone to see this and go check it out. Deep dive with Digital Duo, draw your own conclusion. Thanks for listening, Thanks for listening. God bless