Overview
- Your Personal Podcast is an AI tool in The Washington Post app that generates personalized audio episodes based on selected topics, reading history, preferred hosts, and desired length.
- Internal testing across three rounds found 68% to 84% of generated scripts failed the Post’s pass/fail standard, according to documents shared with Semafor.
- Staff who reviewed outputs reported errors including misattributed or fabricated quotes, factual misinterpretations, injected commentary, and pronunciation mistakes.
- An internal review warned that small prompt tweaks were unlikely to fix core issues, yet the product review team recommended release with a Beta label and plans to iterate.
- CTO Vineet Khosla and head of product Bailey Kattleman promoted the tool as central to product and AI goals, while newsroom messages shared externally showed sharp criticism of the launch.