AI Podcast Tools for Planning, Production & Promotion
Contents
Thousands of new episodes come out everyday and a lot of them are brand podcasts for good reason. Podcasting has proven to be one of the best ways for brands to humanize themselves, allowing them to connect with their crowd in a way that wasn’t possible before.
Having said that, authenticity is a non-negotiable in the podcasting business. People can sniff out lazy, disingenuous AI content from a mile away, and a lot of them don’t appreciate it.
This begs the question: Will using AI tools enhance or deteriorate your content? Your workflow will be a lot easier, but over-reliance on AI for script writing will inevitably become apparent, unless you direct it properly and allow your perspective and style shine through.
However, the script is only a part of what goes into podcasting. There’s so much more: planning, recording, editing, publishing, promoting, you name it. With AI being what it is today, there are some great tools out there that can help you streamline all that.
These tools can save you a lot of time, and take a lot of stress out of the process. In this guide, we’ve rounded some AI tools that every podcaster should have in their arsenal.
Before We Begin, Here’s the Stack at a Glance
If you’re looking to skip the deep dive and get straight to the tech, here is the curated selection of industry-leading AI tools currently streamlining every stage of the podcast production workflow:
Script enhancement and outlining: ChatGPT
Enhancing audio quality: Descript’s Studio Sound or Adobe Audition’s Audio Enhancer
Voice cloning: Elevenlabs
Video podcasting: Runway’s AI tools for footage
Transcriptions: Descript
Repurposing content: Listener.fm or Descript’s Underlord
Tools for Content Planning
Strong podcasts start with strong planning. Before you hit record, there’s research to do, angles to shape, and a rough script or outline to stress-test. This is where AI tools can earn their keep.
Used well, they can speed up topic research, help structure episodes, and tighten up your scripting and edits, without replacing your voice. The real value isn’t in letting AI “create” the show for you, but in using it to reduce prep time and improve clarity.
Script Writing and Editing
ChatGPT: Free
Gemini: Free
Paraphrasing Tool’s Script Generator: Free
Before you start recording a podcast, you’ll want to write a script or create a podcast outline. Some podcasters prefer a brief bullet-point outline, others prefer a list of notes, and many prefer a proper script. Whatever your style, you'll find that AI can help you organize your thoughts into a neat outline.
ChatGPT is typically the go-to when it comes to stuff like this. Gemini and Claude can do this too, but GPT does a better job at "getting it", if that makes sense. The other two need a bit more spoon-feeding and refined prompting. However, this easiness comes at a price, no matter what tool you're using.
Remember, generative AI is designed to do two things: guess when it doesn't know something ("hallucinate") and tell you what it thinks you want to hear—a lot of pandering and yes-bossing, unless you're obviously wrong. It's not going to tell you 2+2=5 if that's what you want to hear.
Think of it like autocorrect on steroids with access to the internet. It can't be original and reason like you can or perform actual research, so even if you're using it for brainstorming, for which it seems to work bloody well, take what it says with a fistful of salt and apply healthy skepticism.
It can easily handle stuff like proofreading, improving grammar, and sentence construction, but it needs source material to work with. In an ideal scenario, that material should be your thoughts, opinions, research, tacked on along with your prompt, messy as it may be.
Only then can it create content and help in a meaningful way. For instance, you can dump your thoughts onto a document, copy and paste them into GPT and ask it to weave them into a coherent outline. Like so:
“I will be interviewing the CEO of Pepsi to discuss leadership and creating an improved company culture. What are some compelling questions to ask them?”
Or,
“I’ve written notes to support my podcast episode on Sustainability in the Hotel Industry, can you help me organize them into a coherent outline?”
Perplexity.ai can also help gather information in real-time. These tools can serve as AI-based script generators and streamline this process. Simply upload your messy thought process, and let the tool put together a coherent content outline for you.
If you'd rather write yourself without letting AI interject but still want some of the basic functionality, then we recommend the Paraphrasing Tool, particularly their Podcast Script Generator.
It’s free and fun, but you can literally only paraphrase stuff with it, meaning you’ll probably have a lot of editing to do.
Research
Consensus: Free (limited), paid plans from ~$8/month
Elicit: Free (limited), paid plans from ~$10/month
Research Rabbit: Free
Scite.ai: Free (limited), paid plans from ~$12/month
Perplexity.ai: Free
NotebookLM: Free
Semantic Scholar: Free
Research is where most podcasts win or lose. Strong episodes are grounded in credible sources, good context, and a clear understanding of what’s already been said on a topic.
AI research tools won’t replace proper sourcing or critical thinking, but they can dramatically cut down the time it takes to find relevant material, scan long papers, surface key claims, and organise your notes before you ever open a script doc.
The tools listed above are useful at different points in the research workflow. Some help you discover academic or evidence-backed sources. Others summarise dense material, extract claims with citations, or let you interrogate your own reference library.
Used together, they make it easier to move from “What should this episode be about?” to “Here’s the evidence, structure, and context I need to write a solid script.”
Enhancing Audio Quality With AI
Auphonic: Free for 2h/month otherwise offers subscription or one-time credits from 11$
Alitu: 38$/month, includes all features.
Descript:12$/month for 20 uses of AI features, 24$/month for unlimited
Adobe Audition Audio Enhancer: $22.99/month
Elevenlabs: Free for 10m audio, then starting from 5$
You can do a lot with decent microphones, sensible room treatment, and a studio recording setup, but real-world conditions are rarely perfect. Remote guests might not have access to high-quality mics, they might have an echoey, causing their lows to get overly boomy.
Adjusting levels and cleaning this up manually can be time-consuming, especially if you’re producing on a regular schedule.
This is where AI-powered audio tools can take friction out of post-production. They can level volume, reduce noise, improve clarity, and rescue recordings that would otherwise be borderline unusable.
These tools are not magic, and they won’t turn terrible audio into studio-grade sound, but they can help a lot. Used well, they help you ship more consistent episodes, reduce editing time, and maintain a professional baseline even when recording conditions are less than ideal.
Noise Reduction and Sound Enhancement
Auphonic: Free for 2h/month, otherwise offers subscriptions or one-time credits from $11
Alitu: $38/month, includes all features
Descript: $12/month for 20 uses of AI features, $24/month for unlimited
Adobe Audition Audio Enhancer: $22.99/month
Background noise can be a major distraction. Luckily most sound editing and recording tools have included AI podcasting tools to remove unwanted noise and enhance overall sound quality.
Auphonic, Alitu, and Descript all have this capability in their editing tools. Adobe Audition also has a new AI tool to clean up audio. These applications analyze your audio file and make intelligent adjustments, resulting in a cleaner and more enjoyable listening experience.
This can save you a ton of time in post-production. Yet we can’t stress enough that it’s still important to listen through your whole audio after applying this tool.
They can help clean up background audio, but at times they may also affect your hosts’ voice recording, cutting out clips where their voice was too soft, or creating a wave effect of their voice going in and out.
Voice Modulation and Synthesis
Descript (Lyrebird): Included in Descript plans, $12/month for 20 uses of AI features, $24/month for unlimited
Respeecher: Pricing varies by use case and volume (custom / enterprise pricing)
ElevenLabs: Free for limited usage, paid plans starting from $5/month
Sometimes, you need to tweak your voice or create synthetic voices. AI tools such as Descript’s Lyrebird and Respeecher can do just that. Lyrebird offers real-time voice modulation, allowing you to change pitch or tone with ease.
Respeecher can create high-quality cloned voices, making it possible to bring characters to life or even clone voices for creative projects.
These tools can be used to include voice-acting sections, create a co-host, or even regenerate original recordings. For example, say you messed up some data while you were recording an episode, instead of re-recording, a producer can use a cloned voice to swap the numbers quickly.
Our team at Lower Street recommends checking out ElevenLabs. It requires just a short sample of a person’s voice, then it can clone it for you. Upload a maximum of five minutes of recording, confirm you have the speaker’s consent, and you can begin creating text-to-speech content.
We’ve found ElevenLabs to be easy to set up but with little room for customization. You can read more about experimenting with voice-cloning at this blog: Voice Cloning & AI Co-Hosts: The Future of Podcasts.
Tools for Video Podcasting
Photoshop & Premiere Pro: Each available at $23/month
Runway: Free plan available or monthly subscription from $12/month
When it comes to video podcasting, Adobe has many AI tools that can help improve your content. For example, within Photoshop you can use the tool Generative Expand whenever a footage lacks sufficient headroom or background.
Our producers use this with one image, then insert the expanded image under the video layer in Premiere Pro to create the illusion of a larger background.
Also in Premiere Pro, you can use the tool Auto Transcription for automating captions. This is a pretty common tool found also in Descript, Alitu, and other video content production software. However, here too we recommend double-checking all captions because they are not always accurate.
Runway is another service that offers many video and audio AI tools, you can use video-to-video tools to generate creative alternatives to footage. Text or Image-to-Video tools to create new footage, and a green screen tool to quickly remove non-green screen backgrounds from videos.
AI for Transcriptions
Ottter.ai: Free plan available with limitations, otherwise starts from $8.33/month
Riverside: $24/month for full use of AI tools
Descript: 12$/month for 20 uses of AI features, 24$/month for unlimited
HappyScribe:17$/month for 120 minutes of AI transcription
Transcriptions are key for accessibility and SEO. Transcripts allow your content to reach a wider audience, including those with hearing impairments, and improve search engine rankings by providing textual content for indexing.
While nowadays some platforms like Apple Podcasts will automatically include a generated transcript, creating your own can ensure that the text is correct. It also is beneficial to have on hand to share with listeners who may want the additional content.
Popular AI transcription tools like Otter.ai, Riverside, and Descript offer automated services that transcribe spoken words into text quickly and accurately. These tools save time and reduce the hassle of manual transcription, allowing podcasters to focus on content creation.
HappyScribe is another great option that is not necessarily only a podcast tool; it works for broader audio or video transcription, like meetings and subtitles generation for your content.
Yet again, like any work with AI podcasting tools, make sure to have a human eye give it a review, they can often make mistakes!
AI in Podcast Distribution and Marketing
Podbean AI: 2 hr free trial, then from $6/month
Buzzsprout: from $10/month
Ausha: from $13/month
Listener.fm: from $19/month
Dubb Media: from $24.99/month
Capsho: from $99/month
Beehiiv: from $31.20/ month
Once your podcast is produced, the next challenge is getting it heard. AI podcasting tools are revolutionizing the way creators and brands distribute and market their content.
Today you'll find AI features being added to all of the best podcast marketing tools. These features allow you to optimize your show's SEO, help to boost reach on social media, and smooth out your repurposed content via newsletters.
Search Engine Optimization
Podbean: Free and paid hosting plans (AI features included on paid tiers)
Buzzsprout: Free plan available, paid plans from $12/month
Ausha: Paid plans from ~$13/month
Listener.fm: Paid plans (pricing varies by volume and features)
SEO isn’t just for blogs. AI can help optimize podcast metadata and descriptions for better visibility. Platforms like Podbean and Buzzsprout use AI to analyze keywords and suggest improvements, ensuring your podcast ranks higher in search results. This means more listeners find and engage with your content.
Ausha combines speech-to-text transcription tools with their Podcast Search tools to boost your show-up podcast search results. They help you identify keywords relevant to your content, and perfect your transcripts and show notes to hit those search results.
If you have the budget Listener.fm offers an all-in-one SEO tool. Listener.fm generates everything you may need for your show.
Show titles, show notes, and timestamps are just the beginning, this tool also pulls key quotes from the show, content-related blogs, and social posts for X or LinkedIn. Just upload your episode and let it do its work, this is a huge time saver.
Creating Social Content
Descript: $12/month for 20 uses of AI features, $24/month for unlimited
Riverside: Free plan available, paid plans from ~$15/month
Dubb Media: Paid plans from ~$29/month
Capsho NextGen: Paid plans from ~$29/month
The best ways of promoting your podcast is to repurpose content across different social platforms. Audiograms are one way of doing this, but a more engaging strategy has been to use video clips of hosts and speakers.
Descript and Riverside both offer a tool to find the most engaging clips of your recording and clip them for social media.
You can then further add captions and other effects for an added touch before publishing to Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Dubb Media is another of the best AI tools for podcasting. It can automatically generate marketing content for your show.
Dubb helps generate show notes, as well as social posts for TikTok, LinkedIn, and X. Plus, it will generate guest posts to share with guest speakers, newsletter copy for your email marketing, and transcripts. Dubb really helps cut time when making creative assets.
If we had to pick one tool though, Capsho NextGen would be it. You can automatically generate optimized episode titles, descriptions, show notes, blog posts, social media captions, emails, articles, video descriptions, and transcripts from audio/video content.
Capsho also automates your workflow by allowing users to trim extra audio or video, choose topic focus to highlight the clips desired, and customize pre-written templates. Not to mention many, many more features to help podcasters create content from their episodes. This app was created exclusively for podcasters and content creators in mind.
Writing Newsletters
If you aren’t using newsletters to further engage your podcast audience, you are really missing out. I know, another content piece to create?
Yep, but luckily there are some very handy AI tools out there to help you save time here. Beehiiv is a great one that implements AI text tools, image tools, and translation, speeding up the process.
Best Practices for AI Tools
Adding AI to your podcasting process can definitely help save time and streamline tasks you need an extra hand with. However, remember that it’s not always ideal. AI makes mistakes and lacks that human touch.
When working with these tools, always, always, always, double-check the end result. Proofread for fact-checking or even general typos. Listen again to any edits made to ensure the sound flows naturally, and the voice sounds good.
These tools are meant to compliment your process, not make it tougher. If you find one tool doesn’t fit your style, let it go, there’s no need to use them all.
Concluding Summary
AI is undeniably impacting all industries, including podcasting. From content creation and audio enhancement to distribution and marketing, these tools are here to make the podcasting process smoother and more efficient.
By integrating AI into your podcasting workflow, you can improve the quality of your content, reach a broader audience, and gain valuable insights into what your listeners are into.
There are hundreds of tools out there, but we hope our list of the best AI podcasting tools gives you a start to try AI in your production. Download our Complete Guide to Using AI in Podcasting for more insights and ideas on how to best leverage AI for your show.
The future of podcasting is here, and it will only keep evolving, you might as well get your foot in the door as things are changing!
