but clearly he lapsed here and as a non-listener I immediately clicked out.

Hey Sean. I spent 9 months writing this book by hand. Yes the image is AI but the book is certainly not. You're definitely not obligated to read it, but I do want to comment that I put a ton of effort into the project.

Hi Mike! If you spent 9 months writing this book by hand, couldn't you do the courtesy of commissioning an artist to make you a cover image by hand as you clearly see the value of doing things by hand and not stealing the hard work of all the artists who have worked tirelessly to make art by hand only for AI to steal that work and for you to prompt it in seconds.

Put more effort into respecting other art forms and you might not get this reception next time.

In which case it is very infuriating and sad. Honestly if he just did not put that AI art on every page, the whole thing would look way more serious. Presentation and first impression sadly do matter. Put a pile of trash in a museum and people will think it's art, put art next to a pile of garbage and people will think it's trash.

These days I feel like a stick figure drawing in MS Paint even if crude denotes that an actual effort was made compared to "Generate an image of XYZ that includes blah blah blah..." sadly.

In my mind both are first steps to something more "proper" but one is at least hand-crafted artisan-ish compared to the other.

I have no qualms about using AI generated images as placeholder stuff or as a first step in an iterative process but when someone just slaps the image without the least bit of retouching it ends up looking kitsch.

I think you're going to realize that as time passes and this becomes more normalized, your opinion is going to become the minority. That might be a good thing, or maybe not.

Just not enough to actually record a podcast, but generate a script and send it to an API to generate a (very recognisable) AI voiced podcast. It's literally called "Talk Python" with no humans talking.

Not sure if you're confusing with something else? "Talk Python to Me" is a long running podcast that has had a lot of definitely real humans on the show[0].

[0] https://talkpython.fm/

No, listen to the audio on the site originally attached. It's definitely AI.

I am as confident as possible that it's not- a lot of the guests are fairly known figures in the open source world (Wes McKinney, Charlie Marsh, Ned Batchelder) and video footage of the podcasts are available.

The podcast has also been going for several years, before it would have been possible to generate audio podcasts with AI.

Please see the comment further down the thread.

Yeah I did! That makes so much more sense now - I thought you were talking about the podcast itself and was very confused.

No worries :)

What? The interview podcast?

The sample that's on the site, it's definitely AI generated.

Listened to it and yeah... not only is the voice obvious AI, it drops an "It's not just X — it's Y" within the first 20 seconds. Copy-pasted straight from GPT.

Likely safe to assume that everything on this site is AI generated, including the book.

If anyone else was confused, they're referring to the Audio Readers' Briefs. I didn't immediately recognize it as AI. To be honest the voice sounds exactly like my coworker responsible for doing our product video demonstrations.

I skipped through it and heard it pronounce nginx as en-gee-onix and only then did I realize it was fake.

Hi, see the reply to Joel just up this thread for more info on this. It is not presented as "real" it's clearly introduced as a fun AI extra.

You might want to mention this on the website as well, where it's definitely not clear. I also don't see how to navigate from the website to the introduction where it's explained.

That's a good point. I just redid the sample audio to include the opening section that adds that opening track that sets the stage with the positioning I put above.

I appreciate the idea.

You are not talking about the podcast, you might want to be a bit less straight in your claims it is.

Joel, my podcast has been going for 10 years, I've done research and an interview nearly ever week over that time period resulting in over 500 episodes. It's not AI.

What you are referring to is the Readers' brief and you're taking it out of context. If you actually went to all of them, you would find this as the very first "track":

https://blobs.talkpython.fm/00-readers-brief-intro.mp3?cache...

It clearly explains that this is an extra to the book, it's created with AI and meant to be fun. It makes minor mistakes but enjoy it if you like or just don't listen and read the book without.

Here is the transcript from that opening track in case you don't want to listen:

Hello and welcome to the Reader's Brief for the Talk Python in Production book. This is your author, Michael Kennedy. I am thrilled you're interested in the book.

This companion audio series features short, exploratory conversations around each chapter of the book. They typically range from two and a half to four minutes per chapter. You can listen to each chapter's Reader's Brief just before reading a chapter to help you get in the ideal mindset. Or you can listen afterward and let your mind wander and expand on the ideas covered in the chapter. It's all up to you. Once I neared completion of the book, I had been brainstorming how I could offer an audio version. However, there are sufficiently many code listings that are too important to the content to really support a word-for-word audio book. It would be rough to listen to me narrate a Nginx configuration file to you, for example.

Thus, I came up with the reader's brief idea. A conversation around topics of each chapter in a brief two to four minute format that adds to the book rather than a traditional spoken true audio book. I do want to set expectations a bit. The reader's briefs are spoken by AI. Very good ones, by the way. So you will hear an occasional misspoken acronym such as Nginx or SSH. But enjoy these for what they are and don't expect perfection. They're really interesting ideas and background stories and thoughts on each chapter.

I hope you find that they add value to your experience. I know they did to mine. Finally, I have added the necessary metadata to the MP3 files. You should be able to add them all to your music library and they will appear in a single album. MP3 file for all the chapters together and put chapter markers in that MP3 file. Pick which one you want. Thanks for the interest in my book. I'll be with you page by page as you learn from it. Cheers.

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately I've not heard of the podcast before, the only thing I see is the AI art and AI chat embedded on the page too. Just looked and sounded off. Appreciate that's not your intention, but it's how it looks to a person who's never heard of the podcast before.

Fair and thanks for the extra background info.

I agree with everyone! Michael's name is a big stamp of "this will be high quality" for me, but if I didn't previously know that and saw an AI generated cover, there's a good chance I'd assume the content inside was AI generated slop, and might tune out without looking any further.

Thanks sort of Ben. :) The book is 100% human written over 9 months by me. The image is AI yes, but the book is not AI slop. It may be slop, but it's my slop if that's your assessment.

Haha, you're welcome sort of! :)

Love the podcast! I'm sure it isn't slop of any kind - I've really enjoyed reading your recent blog posts about Talk Python's web set up, so I'll definitely be giving it a read.

Thanks Ben, much appreciated.

But there was no care in the images, which made me skeptical of the content. The free chapters are also poorly written. It reads like he dictated the content and didn't do a single review pass on it. The Docker Compose chapter especially is very light on details and doesn't explain how to use the various features and what tradeoffs or issues you may encounter. Like the AI images, the whole product feels rushed and haphazard and lacking in quality.

Thanks Ayhanfuat. I appreciate the comment. Yes, the image is AI generated, but the book and the content is not. I spent 9 months writing it. Cheers.

What about the content of the "conversations that bookend each chapter"? Are these real people giving their opinion that the second chapter is "fascinating" and that things "make sense" or is it AI-generated? If the latter, what's the point of presenting fake opinions?

Those "reader's briefs" are definitely AI. But they are discussed here a tad out of context. If you actually had the book and pull them down, the first track is me telling about them. It clearly says these are AI and just for fun, enjoy or skip. Here's the intro if you're interested:

https://blobs.talkpython.fm/00-readers-brief-intro.mp3?cache...