Six years after being fired as CEO of Groupon, Andrew Mason has founded a podcast production startup called Descript that basically works like an audio word processing platform. But it also lets users add words they never spoke, thus raising security and deepfake concerns.
The real Putin. Photo: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty
At an MIT conference on Wednesday, a journalist pointedly asked Russian President Vladimir Putin whether he would interfere again in U.S. elections. Putin demurred.
What's happening: The world leader was actually a glitchy deepfake. His face was a real-time AI-generated mask that made a performer look like Putin on screen — but because the mask stopped at the forehead, this was Putin with a fresh head of hair.
President Trump refused to answer a question from Reuters' Jeff Mason about what he was asking Ukraine's president to do about Joe Biden and his son during a now-infamous July 25 phone call. Instead, Trump criticized European countries for not providing aid to Ukraine, attacked the impeachment investigation as a "hoax" and berated Mason for being "rude."
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
The podcast boom shows no sign of slowing down.
Driving the news: Shonda Rhimes, who already has a nine-figure TV deal with Netflix, has now signed a 3-year podcasting deal with iHeartPodcast Network, creating Shondaland Audio in the process. Other TV companies, like HBO, are making podcasts themselves, with significant success.