“It’s soft propaganda,” says Mandii B, cohost of the sex and lifestyle podcast Decisions, Decisions. The videos, and the rhetoric they spew, are trained on toxic gender tropes. “It subtly shapes beliefs and expectations without offering depth or accountability. It reminds me of how the American Dream was packaged and sold for decades: a clean, repeatable narrative that didn’t necessarily reflect the messy, diverse realities people were actually living. This content does something similar with relationships. It promotes digestible ideals without context, nuance, or responsibility.”
Actual dialog, however, isn’t the end goal for these accounts. Nearly everyone of the pages WIRED reviewed was a funnel to paid courses on AI influencing. In addition to a digital business launch kit ($117) or six-week intensive product accelerator course ($147), the creator behind the Ari Banks avatar offers a $497 lesson plan called “AI Content University” where people learn to “Create viral AI podcasts & talking head content, Master the Realism Formula™ (so your content doesn’t look AI), and Use lip sync + voice cloning to bring your content to life.” She promises to “Turn your content into income (not just views).”
AI with Lotti, the creator of Luxe’s account, who claims to have grown her Facebook page to 100,000 followers and 12 million views in under 30 days, sells an “AI Luxe Academy” course for $84. And for $9.97, you can buy Melissa Devine’s “300+ Quotes For the Women Who Refuse to Settle” to help script your AI podcaster’s identity.
“This is essentially the same principle driving high-performing influencer content: specificity and emotional resonance,” says Lily Comba, founder and CEO of influencer marketing agency Superbloom. “The difference is that AI is running that playbook at scale. But engagement without a relationship underneath it has a ceiling. Influencer marketing learned that lesson the hard way, and I’d expect AI creators to hit the same wall.”
It’s possible that the greatest harm in these videos is how regular they seem. The realm of AI is now polluted with manipulated content that is either uncannily bizarre, violent, sexy, or cartoonishly shocking—some people are still obsessed with those fruit videos—yet the AI podcast clips largely adopt a normal tone. There’s nothing especially extraordinary about the scenes save for the advice being given. That’s what makes them sneaky.
But the creators behind these flawless AI personas don’t seem to realize that the significance of podcasting—and perhaps the power of the medium—is all about human imperfection: conversations, opinions, and experiences that aren’t always neatly packaged but shared with a kind of unedited candor.
Even so, Mandii B understands why people are drawn to this style of artificial relationship content. “They’re searching for guidance. When something sounds confident, polished, and widely accepted, it’s easy to trust it.” She isn’t worried that AI podcasters are going to replace her anytime soon. The popularity of these videos boils down to a larger issue troubling society, she says. “People don’t like to think for themselves.”