AI Podcast Production — Step-by-Step AI Workflow Guide
AI Podcast Production: Produce professional podcasts from topic research to audio publishing using AI for scripting, voice generation, and editing.
Time: 1-2 hours · Difficulty: Intermediate · Steps: 5 · Tools: 10
About this workflow
Produce professional podcasts from topic research to audio publishing using AI for scripting, voice generation, and editing.
This AI workflow is broken into 5 practical steps, each matched with a recommended tool so you can execute end-to-end without piecing the stack together yourself.
Each step below lists the action to take and the recommended AI tool for that step. You can substitute alternatives from the same category if you already have a preferred tool.
Workflow steps
Step 1: Topic Research & Scripting
Research trending topics, organize source material, and generate podcast scripts and talking points.
Recommended tool: NotebookLM. Alternatives: ChatGPT, Perplexity
Step 2: Voice Generation
Generate host and guest voices using AI voice cloning with natural intonation and emotion.
Recommended tool: ElevenLabs. Alternatives: Fish Audio
Step 3: Background Music
Generate original background music, jingles, and sound effects for your podcast.
Step 4: Audio Editing
Edit podcast audio using transcript-based editing — cut, rearrange, and fix audio by editing text. Remove filler words, normalize levels, denoise, and mix all tracks into a polished episode.
Step 5: Show Notes & Promotion
Generate episode summaries, show notes, timestamps, and social media promotional clips.
Recommended tool: ChatGPT. Alternatives: Claude, NotebookLM
AI tools used in this workflow
- NotebookLM — Google's AI research assistant that analyzes uploaded documents with source-grounded citations and generates podcast-style Audi...
- ChatGPT — OpenAI's flagship conversational AI. As of September 2026 the top model is GPT-6 Astra (released September 3, 2026), built for ...
- Perplexity — AI-powered answer engine providing real-time, source-cited responses. Powered by Perplexity's in-house Sonar models plus GPT-5....
- ElevenLabs — Leading AI voice generator with Eleven v3 (now generally available) supporting 70+ languages, audio tags for inline control, an...
- Fish Audio — AI text-to-speech and voice cloning platform powered by the Fish Audio S2.1 Pro model — ~70ms time-to-first-audio streaming, in...
- Suno — AI music generation platform that creates complete songs with vocals from text prompts. Industry-leading quality with v5 model ...
- Udio — AI music generation platform by former Google DeepMind researchers that creates full songs with vocals, instrumentals, and prof...
- Descript — Edit your videos & podcasts just by typing. Descript's powerful AI editing tools let you make videos, podcasts, & short clips f...
- CapCut — AI-powered video editing platform with auto-captions, background removal, AI avatars, and text-to-speech. The leading free vide...
- Claude — Anthropic's flagship AI. Claude Fable 5.1 (September 1, 2026) is its most capable publicly available model, built for demanding...
How to use this guide
Work through the steps in order. Each step's recommended tool is a suggestion — if you already use an equivalent tool, substitute it freely. Where steps feed into each other (outputs from step N become inputs for step N+1), keep artifacts organized in a shared folder or notebook.
Explore the full AI Workflows library for variations, the AI Tools Directory for alternatives, and our AI Blog for in-depth tutorials.
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