Opinion Podcast preview

[jim boy]

Hey all,

I’ve been playing around with an idea for an AI-generated short daily Cats podcast that sums up the last 24 hours on this board — news, rumours, training notes, match chat, injury whispers, and the general mood of the place.

Nothing long, just a quick hit so people can catch up without trawling through pages of posts. Keep posters connected with BigFooty through whatever podcast platform you use.

Keen to hear what the board thinks.

Tone, gender, voice, name - all up for debate

Sample feed below - And YES, I know a couple of players mentioned are not current or are geelong players. I'll get that fixed.

https://www.bigfootycontent.com/podcasts/cats/2026-06-05/transcript_20260605_022012.mp3

 

[Baudolino]

**** AI.

I actively hate this idea, don't do it.

 

[allrighty]

Good idea it's one of the things AI does best. But I'd prefer a written summary. Link in here to in a separate thread

 

[Baudolino]

Tolerating AI in any way on BigFooty will create a slippery slope towards the integration of AI functionality with user posting, which would instantly ruin the forum completely. Please don't normalise it.

 

[Lana]

Are you planning on selling bigfooty?

Otherwise I don’t see how this makes sense from a business perspective. How does this improve user retention, if anything it would reduce engagement as users substitute reading the forum for listening to the “postcast” . The more users that engage through the podcast the less that flows through the conversation. If the podcast is a success it would leach off the forum and reduce the ratio of users who transition from reader to member/lurker to engager to poster to subscriber

Bigfooty isn’t Facebook or reddit where users narcissistically yell into the void and hope the void to whisper back. They act as an community pin up board,bigfooty is a much more interactive experience, interaction are at a personal the scale. Each active thread is a ongoing low level conversation that fits into a wider culture of the board as protected by moderation.

People come here for the tight knit community and human interaction. Users don’t doubt that there is a person on the otherside of a post or a like. It wouldn’t take much AI integration to poison that well.

 

[Cataholic]

Are you planning on selling bigfooty?

Otherwise I don’t see how this makes sense from a business perspective. How does this improve user retention, if anything it would reduce engagement as users substitute reading the forum for listening to the “postcast” . The more users that engage through the podcast the less that flows through the conversation. If the podcast is a success it would leach off the forum and reduce the ratio of users who transition from reader to member/lurker to engager to poster to subscriber

Bigfooty isn’t Facebook or reddit where users narcissistically yell into the void and hope the void to whisper back. They act as an community pin up board,bigfooty is a much more interactive experience, interaction are at a personal the scale. Each active thread is a ongoing low level conversation that fits into a wider culture of the board as protected by moderation.

People come here for the tight knit community and human interaction. Users don’t doubt that there is a person on the otherside of a post or a like. It wouldn’t take much AI integration to poison that well.

x 2.

 

[Mr Meow]

This sounds great. I'd like the AI speaker to be Baudolino's dream woman: red head, soft curves, sultry voice and a sassy style.

 

[Cataholic]

**** AI.

I actively hate this idea, don't do it.

It would rob this place of its soul imo.

 

[TomsBulgingDisc]

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

 

[CatToTheFuture]

You'll also find common AI crawlers blocked from the site.

 

[CatToTheFuture]

The thing i think AI crawlers could be useful for here is basically a better search function.

"Summarise all public posts made about player X's purported trade destinations. Assess the validity of such claims based on the posting history of the user making the claim, cross reference the timing of posts against imfornation made available through professional news accounts to look for leading clains later verified"

Things like that would take AI minutes but are not logistically possible for people to accomplish

 

[allrighty]

This sounds great. I'd like the AI speaker to be Baudolino's dream woman: red head, soft curves, sultry voice and a sassy style.

A la Mad Men?

 

[jim boy]

The thing i think AI crawlers could be useful for here is basically a better search function.

"Summarise all public posts made about player X's purported trade destinations. Assess the validity of such claims based on the posting history of the user making the claim, cross reference the timing of posts against imfornation made available through professional news accounts to look for leading clains later verified"

Things like that would take AI minutes but are not logistically possible for people to accomplish

Unless the costs comes down dramatically - then that wont happen. For day-to-day activity, may use AI to help the mod team, especially when getting on top of snarky responses, but a long way from replacing the human touch.

 

[CatToTheFuture]

Unless the costs comes down dramatically - then that wont happen. For day-to-day activity, may use AI to help the mod team, especially when getting on top of snarky responses, but a long way from replacing the human touch.

Reckon AI costs will go up not down. They have to price it to displace humans first then they can strong arm companies.

Gemini is currently free and does 80% of what you want.

 

[jim boy]

Are you planning on selling bigfooty?

Otherwise I don’t see how this makes sense from a business perspective. How does this improve user retention, if anything it would reduce engagement as users substitute reading the forum for listening to the “postcast” . The more users that engage through the podcast the less that flows through the conversation. If the podcast is a success it would leach off the forum and reduce the ratio of users who transition from reader to member/lurker to engager to poster to subscriber

Bigfooty isn’t Facebook or reddit where users narcissistically yell into the void and hope the void to whisper back. They act as an community pin up board,bigfooty is a much more interactive experience, interaction are at a personal the scale. Each active thread is a ongoing low level conversation that fits into a wider culture of the board as protected by moderation.

People come here for the tight knit community and human interaction. Users don’t doubt that there is a person on the otherside of a post or a like. It wouldn’t take much AI integration to poison that well.

Dont disagree with any of this - certainly we dont want the podcast to detract from the conversation or engagement that is happening. It's also why allrighty's suggestion was considered, but only briefly and rejected for the reasons you've mentioned. It would have been super-easy to do - the podcast goes from a written summary of the day's activities, turned into a 'podcast script' and only then given a 'voice'.

The target audience isn't really anyone who has posted here. It only gets produced once a day and that loses currency even over 24 hours for the keen poster. It's aimed more at that infrequent user or time-poor user who maybe normally only visits every week or so.

So to answer the question - the major business driver of this is to see if can lead to greater participation on the boards, - although we are considering whether that can get sponsored in its own right, as this does cost money. It may not work hence a couple of trials.

Incidentally - latest episode https://www.bigfootycontent.com/podcasts/cats/2026-06-06/transcript_20260606_170039.mp3

 

[jim boy]

Oh and one more thing - it can also help you digest what is happening on a board that you are only half-interested in - for example https://www.bigfootycontent.com/podcasts/blues/2026-06-06/transcript_20260606_170033.mp3 - carlton fans are pretty happy that we lost.

 

[CatToTheFuture]

Dont disagree with any of this - certainly we dont want the podcast to detract from the conversation or engagement that is happening. It's also why allrighty's suggestion was considered, but only briefly and rejected for the reasons you've mentioned. It would have been super-easy to do - the podcast goes from a written summary of the day's activities, turned into a 'podcast script' and only then given a 'voice'.

The target audience isn't really anyone who has posted here. It only gets produced once a day and that loses currency even over 24 hours for the keen poster. It's aimed more at that infrequent user or time-poor user who maybe normally only visits every week or so.

So to answer the question - the major business driver of this is to see if can lead to greater participation on the boards, - although we are considering whether that can get sponsored in its own right, as this does cost money. It may not work hence a couple of trials.

Incidentally - latest episode https://www.bigfootycontent.com/podcasts/cats/2026-06-06/transcript_20260606_170039.mp3

Isn't this just amplifying irrelevant opinions and noise?

 

[jim boy]

Isn't this just amplifying irrelevant opinions and noise?

People get different things from BigFooty like they do all things, and some people get nothing from BigFooty. And this is true of the podcast, you may get nothing from it, which really is absolutely fine. It's existence can just drift into the far reaches of your memory - it wont be thrust down your throat. For others though, this may be the ideal way for then to consume BigFooty content, or it might pique their interests into being more active contributors. It may even do the opposite, which would be bad, in which case the podcast gets culled. We want to give it a go though.

So I am still looking for feedback - everything about it, the name, the podcaster's name, the mood - is it too light-hearted?, the music (which is also AI generated to avoid copyright issues). The length, the frequency.

 

[you pick one]

Love it or hate it AI is here to stay shorten up the music at both ends and go for it let's face it a lot of what we are reading here now is just poorly disguised AI generated response information unacknowledged.

 

[Cataholic]

Love it or hate it AI is here to stay shorten up the music at both ends and go for it let's face it a lot of what we are reading here now is just poorly disguised AI generated response information unacknowledged.

This sounds like AI

 

[allrighty]

Oh and one more thing - it can also help you digest what is happening on a board that you are only half-interested in - for example https://www.bigfootycontent.com/podcasts/blues/2026-06-06/transcript_20260606_170033.mp3 - carlton fans are pretty happy that we lost.

It's also for people like me who cant sit and read everything. Quick recap if you like. Downsides have been outlined well here, leave as is.

 

[Baudolino]

Love it or hate it AI is here to stay shorten up the music at both ends and go for it let's face it a lot of what we are reading here now is just poorly disguised AI generated response information unacknowledged.

This attitude of "let's just capitulate, there's nothing that can be done about it" is half the problem. We have agency on both an individual and collective level, the idea that we have no option but to just passively accept the integration of AI into everything is absurd.

 

[Baudolino]

People get different things from BigFooty like they do all things, and some people get nothing from BigFooty. And this is true of the podcast, you may get nothing from it, which really is absolutely fine.

No, even though it will be catering for only a small part of the community, it's still not "fine" to use it at all. It should be a zero tolerance policy.

Any AI at all is worse than zero AI, as it normalises it within the forum and will inevitably lead to it being adopted on a widr level in other areas, because if you can make and accept a "What's the harm?" argument for AI being used in this scenario, then you or others will no doubt end up making and accept a "What's the harm" argument for integrating AI into other areas of the forum.

AI can always be advocating for on the basis of convenience. Obviously it's convenient, no one is disputing that - and the exact same convenience arguments being made to defend an AI podcast can and will be made to defend other areas of adding AI functionality to BigFooty. But the convenience isn't really the point, the point is that some things are worth more than convenience and indeed should be prioritised over convenience.

 

[you pick one]

This attitude of "let's just capitulate, there's nothing that can be done about it" is half the problem. We have agency on both an individual and collective level, the idea that we have no option but to just passively accept the integration of AI into everything is absurd.

To late this Genie won't go back in the bottle.Doesn't mean I like it.

 

[Baudolino]

To late this Genie won't go back in the bottle.Doesn't mean I like it.

I'm not suggesting it's possible to put it back in the bottle. All I'm saying is that we don't have to act like we have no agency and that we're helplessly committed to integrating it into every aspect of our lives. Obviously I'm aware it can't be un-invented and it's going to exist whether I like it or not. That doesn't mean we have to take a laissez-faire approach to people using it or accept that it cannot be restricted at all. "We have no choice" is patently untrue.