Audio platform Pocket FM uses AI tools to help it expand its content catalog

India based audio platform Pocket FM has over 200,000 hours of content on the web site. However, the corporate’s CEO Rohan Nayak believes that the platform still has room to grow when it comes to creating original content and expanding its library to include multiple genres and sub-genres. The fastest way to achieve that is to use artificial intelligence tools that may help produce audio, write strategies, and tailor these stories to different geographies.

“I still believe that our content catalog is not sufficient for our users. There are so many genres and subgenres that we don’t have in our library. I don’t think we have the depth of content that would fall under the adult entertainment category,” Nayak told TechCrunch over the phone.

The company has already established an excellent partnership with ElevenLabs to transform texts into audio series. This resulted in 5x faster production and 30x lower cost compared to professionally generated audio series.

“We have already tested how these AI adaptations perform in various markets and have seen encouraging results. We are still refining our models for errors, but we believe the technology is good enough to be used in program production,” Nayak said.

One of the AI ​​tools Pocket FM is trying out allows stories to be adapted across regions. The company says it has trained internal models that do not do easy translation, but handle cultural nuances when transforming stories from one region to one other.

He added that the difficult task is to solve the models’ hallucinations within the context of stories spanning a whole lot of episodes. Pocket FM found that it had to address the restrictions of context windows of open source models, in addition to construct maps of the relationships between different entities within the story to maintain character consistency.

Another tool the corporate offers for writers is to test their work as a creative assistant, helping them create alternative stories or giving them plot ideas. The company also plans to use some insights from historical data within the tool to show authors what’s working on the platform.

Nayak mentioned that while the tool is in its early stages of development, the corporate wants to open up a author’s room to a solo author who might post an episode on a single day. He noted that a author’s room allows you to brainstorm without having to control your creativity, and that’s the predominant idea of ​​this writing assistant.

Additionally, the corporate is investing in creating a success engine that might be based on insights from the platform about which shows develop into hits.

Pocket FM’s ultimate goal is to scale its catalog, on condition that it produces some content itself and produces programming through its network of writers. But to scale and gain popularity, it needs to create hit shows.

“Blockbusters power every content platform. While we have a good start to the funnel with user-generated content, blockbusters are still hard to come by.”

Pocket FM achieved encouraging results thanks to the implementation of artificial intelligence. It has over 40,000 series on the platform with the help of artificial intelligence in voice creation. What’s more, the corporate generated $3 million in revenue from them. Overall, the platform earned $127 million in fiscal yr 2024.

The company’s most difficult challenge is finding the appropriate balance between AI helping creators and creating content quickly. There is at all times a risk that individuals will use AI to speed up content production and degrade quality. As a result, the platform becomes stuffed with mediocre content and it becomes difficult for the algorithms to distinguish good programs.

Puneet Sharma, a author and lyricist based in India, identified that in a world where a lot work is formulaic, the onus might be on artists to prove the authenticity of their work.

Sharma added that AI tools can help writers generate ideas and learn different styles. However, because of this learning could also be lost through failure within the means of using these tools.

Nayak said some authors and creators are already using AI tools. The company’s idea is to provide tools together with the context of the story and a platform.

Pocket FM has raised $197 million in multiple rounds from backers including Lightspeed Ventures, Tencent and Times Internet. The company competes on multiple fronts with other players resembling Audible, Omidyar Network-backed Pratilipi and Google-backed Kuku FM.