After the first year of buzz and acclaim from readers who benefited from the book, sales of the Women Seen and Heard Speaker’s Journal — which I wrote in collaboration with Dr. Anita Perez Ferguson – softened. We had used the conventional strategies to market it when it first was published but after a year, it’s not unusual for sales to slump. When Consultant Greg Conderacci suggested that we try AI to produce a podcast as a way of promoting the book, we were skeptical. I am one of the senior citizens who rue the day that AI came to be so popular, recognizing that human voices may be less valued (and employees will be replaced by AI bots)!
Greg produced the podcast easily by dumping the manuscript into notebooklm.google.com software and letting AI do the rest. The process happened in the blink of an eye! Anita and I listened to it separately and, to my surprise, we both thought that the podcast was excellent. The ‘bot Book Reviewers conveyed rapport and lively banter. In terms of what was covered, my co-author and I agreed that we two couldn’t have said it better without hours of work, and even then, perhaps not as well.
From perusing the web to find software now available, it’s clear that AI can help authors distribute their content in myriad ways. There is a range of new AI podcast generators. An author’s work can be quickly translated into other languages. AI can do grammatical and syntactical corrections to written and spoken work, and substitute for a human editorial assistant. For authors who typically have modest budgets, AI may polish the author’s content and save time and money in preparing their content for production and distribution.
I offer the 15-minute podcast here for your review and ask for your feedback.
Do let us know! In closing, let’s agree that there are pressing ethical issues surrounding the use of AI today. Research from Harvard lays out five of them. Nevertheless, many companies are using AI to help workers be more efficient. While we know that some people will be displaced because of AI, let’s remember that throughout history, new technologies have always displaced workers. The good news is that new technologies simultaneously drive innovation and create new opportunities, often requiring different skills that only humans can provide.