In a media briefing off the back of Nine's first half financial results yesterday, CEO Mike Sneesby has suggested the possibility of AI-generated personalised podcasts in the near term. The company's 'Listen' function for its newsmedia mastheads, which uses an AI engine to converts text into audio, could be a precursor to this technology, he said.

Sneesby suggests that this technology could create a podcast tailored to a user's historical consumption on the platform. This process would be completely automated and cost-free, generating a new form of content in the audio category.

"[Listen] is not going to be a huge driver in of itself, but that becomes a precursor to be able to then utilise the combination of audio versions of our news into what could be a completely automated and personalised podcast," Sneesby stated.

"So the technology would exist today for you to be able to jump on the train in the morning and say, I want a 20 minute podcast, the platform looks at your historical consumption on the platform and creates you a podcast that's customised to you based on your behaviours. That kind of thing will be done in completely automated way without any cost involved and we're generating a whole new form of content in the audio category."

Nine has also been working on converting text that drives video content into articles, streamlining content production. Sneesby believes these technological capabilities will create greater efficiency in publishing and media businesses, and enhance the overall content proposition.

"It's gives us a lot of confidence that over time we'll be able to do a couple of things to create greater efficiency in our publishing and media businesses generally, but more importantly, enhance the overall content proposition," he said. "So it's not always about do you get efficiency or how do you reduce your costs. It's also a big opportunity to create more engaging content from the same set of journalism that takes place in the background."