Pocket FM Uses AI to Scale Stories | Tech News

0:00On September 10th, Pocket FM, this Indian audio storytelling platform, has seen some serious growth. Their annualized revenue run rate has doubled in the past year, hitting $500 million. A big part of that boost comes from them leaning hard into artificial intelligence for creating their content. Right now, AI is powering 93% of their entire library and is responsible for 99% of all the new stuff they put out. This shift is happening as generative AI gets more involved in making content, but Pocket FM, which started back in 2018 with serialized. Audio stories still counts on human writers for the initial ideas and the core storytelling. They use AI to scale up those concepts into finished products. The company's CEO, Rohan Nyak, emphasizes that they want to build lasting intellectual property and that's where humans come in. Their strategy is to build AI tools that support the creative process, rather than having AI generate everything on its own.

1:00They've trained their own AI models for things like writing and text to speech, using years of listener data to figure out what keeps people hooked. This massive influx of content has really helped Pocket FM keep listeners engaged. Their 12 month revenue retention rate has jumped significantly from 44% to years ago to 76% now. They believe having a wider variety of stories available helps match different listener tastes. Beyond just audio, they're also using AI to create videos for another app called Pocket Saga, and they're looking to expand into other entertainment, formats like books, TV, and movies through licensing deals. The company is profitable in generating positive cash flow, though they aren't planning to go public any time in the next two years. From the industry, powered by AI, this is Tech News Today.