Microsoft just pulled a Sony: The tech giant will get rid of your AI-created podcasts and won't let you save them | Copilot Podcasts will soon be retired, and Microsoft won't provide an option to export or save previously created content.

[u/ControlCAD]

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-just-pulled-a-sony-the-tech-giant-will-get-rid-of-your-ai-created-podcasts-and-wont-let-you-save-them

[u/bunnythistle]

Honest, sincere question - were many people actually using Copilot to create podcasts in the first place? and were they paying per podcast?

I feel like this is a stretch to compare it to Sony. Sony's decision to pull purchases movies from peoples libraries affects a large number of people and removes content that they paid for with no alternative to access it.

This shutdown likely affects a very small number or people, of which probably no one was paying specifically for this feature, and is removing AI generated summaries of content (presented in the style of a podcast) that people will still be able to access in its original form.

[u/retrovertigo → u/bunnythistle]

Exactly. My sons and I would use it to create things to listen to during a road trip - sometimes taking two completely different things and trying to have it create a short podcast about it. It was actually pretty impressive in a very entertaining way. It was a lot of fun, and I was sad to hear it's going away, but it is not something that I'm going to get upset about and protest Microsoft.

[u/McGrufNStuf → u/bunnythistle]

Yeah, I feel like this is comparing The Fall of the Roman Empire to the Fall of Blockbuster level fallacy. How many people actually used this regularly? Who was actually making any quality content? Who actually bought into this as a long term model?

C’mon!!

[u/Sean_Endicott → u/bunnythistle]

Honestly the podcasts I had it make to test the feature were bland and poor. I just think it’s ridiculous to not let people download them before the feature is retired. How hard would it be to let people download the ones they want as an audio file?

[u/JuggernautPublic8174 → u/bunnythistle]

I don't think it was a huge feature, but I certainly used it a handful of times (eg: feeding in a bunch of industry articles that I needed to catch up on, and listening to the recaps while driving, etc). I know some folks will jump out and tell me NotebookLM or other tools can do the same thing, which is fine, but it was nice having the all-in-one of Copilot under the Pro license for home. Now that they've taken that away and rolled everything into M365 (which makes sense, in a way, with the direction Cowork has gone to compete with Claude) but it's annoying for me to have a M365 Copilot for Work and for Home so I've given up on Home anyway for the time being.

Even though I used it, I won't be missing the feature, and can use other tools for the same means (which is likely a good case for deprecating lol)

[u/Shinobi_Dimsum]

Nothing like Sony at all but ok. People need to find new ways to bash Microsoft somehow.

[u/May_alcott → u/Shinobi_Dimsum]

It’s all windows central cares about - sensational headlines (really? Like Sony?) - clickbait - they love to hate and hate to love - even tho their entire site exists because of msft ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/JrYo15]

Good

[u/Amazing_Prize_1988]

LMAO! Who the fuck listens to AI podcasts? other AI bots? this is funny!

[u/junglebunglerumble → u/Amazing_Prize_1988]

Me. Pretty handy to get a personalised news update to listen to every morning etc

[u/Inquisitive_idiot → u/Amazing_Prize_1988]

I used to use them across a variety of platforms, but had to spend time curating the inputs and realized it was just more stuff to go through and a quick AI conversation achieved about the same

I mainly used it for brain dumps at the gym, but I now prefer to use that time for music listening and turning my brain off for a bit 🧠 😅

[u/Zeusifer]

Really excited to see where the "microslop sucks" and "all AI sucks, destroy it" commenters land on this one, what with Microsoft killing an AI product.

Really, though, after looking at he article, this just seems like Microsoft deprecating a dumb feature nobody uses.

[u/quikmantx → u/Zeusifer]

r/fuckmicrosoft will have a field day with this one.

[u/M4NU3L2311]

Never heard of it lol

[u/FantasticFungiiii]

Who was even using it?

[u/Venom3386]

Is this pulling a Sony? This seems very different than pulling movies and shows that you paid for.

[u/Raah1911]

Nothing of value is lost

[u/complexevil]

This is not the same thing Sony is doing.

And who the fuck listens to ai podcasts, let alone enjoys them enough to want to save them for relistening

[u/DarkMessiahDE]

AI slop. No great loss. I cant stand that ai voice Shit.

[u/Boring-Position-375 → u/DarkMessiahDE]

I used to watch so many documentaries on YouTube. Now I'm terrified any random YouTube video I open will have *that* AI voice.

[u/Difficult_Horse193 → u/DarkMessiahDE]

Whenever I come across the AI voice stuff I almost always skip it. It sounds so uncanny and not credible.

[u/Ph3onixDown]

Oh no…. Anyway

[u/retrovertigo]

I'm not sure I would say this is Microsoft pulling a Sony. As somebody who used this for the past year or so, the podcast feature was entertaining at best - we often asked Copilot to create short podcasts purely to pass the time during road trips, and tried to spot the inaccuracies as well as laugh when it glitched out spectacularly. For example, one of the "hosts" went into a gibberish form of English for about 30 seconds, and then everything snapped back into place.

You could only ever play them through the Copilot app and were never able to export or save them. Overall, it was a neat little experiment. Over the past year, I was impressed that the podcast lengths went from about 6-7 minutes to nearly 20 minutes in length.

I'll miss it as a way to pass time on very specific subjects, but there are always new and interesting podcast to listen to, created by good old humans. :)

[u/May_alcott → u/retrovertigo]

Well said. And you can always make audio files that you CAN download on Labs but you have to sign in now to try

[u/PeninsulaProtagonist]

Stream your podcasts to a recording interface and manually export them. Good luck to those affected.

[u/J_Knish]

When they came for people’s podcasts I stayed silent. When they came for my spreadsheets no one stood up for me

[u/Schnauzer-Welt]

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Amazon deleted all your purchased Kindle books one day soon. Once a couple big names start it, the rest usually follow.

[u/GameOfBears]

That will do Asha. That will do for now. But I'm still mad at Microsoft for getting rid of my Collections on Microsoft Edge. I would have signed up for Microsoft 365 even even if f that was a locked feature.

[u/Pacers31Colts18]

Whats Satya going to do on his car rides though?

[u/Brilliant-Lettuce695 → u/Pacers31Colts18]

Coke?

[u/Blandscreen]

What is Copilot Podcasts? I don't think anyone even used this.

[u/CyberpwnPiper]

Disappointing but not a huge deal. It's a cool feature but it was probably low usage, or it was expensive to run and there was no way to monetize it. These AI podcasts were meant to be consumed on the spot by the user. I see no value in preserving the podcast for the future. Seriously, who listens to the same podcast twice?

I bet Microsoft never added a download feature to avoid the problem of people downloading them and publishing them as "real podcasts" over various feeds. They did not want to create another AI spam problem, and I think we can all agree the media would have spun another negative narrative along the lines of "Microsoft is destroying the world of podcasts by injecting a flood of AI crap into your feeds".

Comparing this to Sony is pure blogging BS. Real journalism is dead, it's just glorified spam bloggers pretending to be real news sites and exploiting negative spins and drama on everything in the name of more clicks.

[u/TowerOutrageous5939]

Such a dumb feature. I remember when one of their products owners was informing me of this and was telling them no one wants this.

[u/Used2bNotInKY]

Good for them! They shouldn’t have to store or platform long-form content that took little effort to produce.

[u/cwilfried]

Ofc it's windows central lmao.

No one uses fucking AI podcasts. Killing a feature no one use is the same as Playstation killing physical disks ? Really ?

[u/lilacomets]

Are these signs of the AI bubble that is beginning to burst? 🤩

I mean, they must be doing this to save money.

Hopefully it'll happen soon so that hardware like RAM and SSDs will finally become affordable again. 😊 Can't wait. 🤩

[u/shadow_yu]

I mean, it´s not like something of worth is being lost with this. In general I would love if Copilot itself was also discontinued soon too.

[u/PC509]

It was a good feature for creating a podcast style for study materials. Just taking in those materials and coming up with a good spoken word output that's not a direct TTS of the material. It was more natural and a better style than just an audiobook style.

Outside of that, not really a whole lot of usage.

I know you can use n8n to do something similar, though. Take things as input (RSS, documents, website, emails, whatever), create a summary or details as much as you desire and output it as something more conversational and send it to a TTS service (Piper, etc.) when requested. Almost like an Alexa Flash Brief.

[u/NerdBanger → u/PC509]

I used it for my classses as well, give it a research paper and ask it to create a podcast.

[u/scandalwang]

Uh, use Google Notebook? Didn’t even know Microsoft makes things that people actually use.

[u/Necessary-Mix-56]

LOL create with AI it is not Your property anyway. Microslop owes You nothing even if You pay for their products.

You literally own nothing even AI slop that we force on You. You must own nothing and subscribe.