Building an Interactive Text-to-Podcast Experience with GPT-4o Real Time API

submited by

Style Pass

2024-10-20 12:30:03

We’ve all been there — you have an article or a training you want to dive into, but your day is packed, and you just can’t seem to fit it in. Much of the content we consume daily is only available in one format. It might be a YouTube video, an article, or a podcast. However, the form of content often depends more on the author’s preference than on the nature of the topic itself. But wouldn’t it be convenient if you could switch between formats as needed, so that article you’ve been wanting to read could turn into something you can listen to while doing the dishes?

This is where AI steps in. A popular example is the recent surge of Text-to-Podcast AI generators. Users can simply paste a link or text into these tools, and they generate an audio podcast version in return. There are several websites offering this kind of service, and I absolutely love this type of AI use case. Whenever AI adapts to fit seamlessly into our lives, rather than forcing us to adapt to it, that’s a win.

Inspired by this, I decided to explore building my own version of a real-time, interactive podcast generator. One of the key advantages of a live podcast is the potential for interactivity. Listeners can ask questions or request more in-depth discussions through a chat interface. This functionality was something I was determined to incorporate into my app, so that the “audience” (you!) could interact directly with the podcast and steer the conversation toward specific points of interest. (The soundcloud demo above actually illustrates this with the ‘audience question’ featured midway through the podcast.)