74. But, Can AI Be a Podcast Host's ASSISTANT? with Aneri Shah & "Gabby"

One podcast host says she's found a way for AI to make us more human.

We've been dunking on AI a whole lot lately.

And that's not going to change any time soon.

Because most of the uses for AI that we're seeing are cheap, sloppy and anti-creative.

But there are people out there who are using it to do things that are interesting... and dare we even say it? Even artistic?

One of those people is writer, filmmaker and podcast host Aneri Shah.

She's pioneered an AI voice bot that she uses to screen potential podcast guests—a process known in the business as "pre-interviewing"—to see if they're a fit for her show, "Not Quite."

And, in an interesting twist, Aneri has painstakingly imbued this chatbot, which she calls "Gabby," with a proximate clone of her own personality.

She says it's because people are more willing to open up to a sassy AI, because they don't feel judged by something that isn't human.

But when Dusty is invited to meet Gabby, he uses the opportunity to probe all the uncomfortably existential questions the bot was designed to get other people to explore.

And the results are interesting and surreal enough to raise some eyebrows.

Transcript:

GABBY

Hey there, GABBY here. Who am I talking to? And where are you calling from today?

Dusty Weis

Hi, GABBY. My name is Dusty Weis. I am calling from Podcamp Media, my podcast production company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. How are you today?

GABBY

Hey, Dusty. Coming in hot from Milwaukee. Love it. I'm doing all right. Just here, living the dream, talking to mysterious voices on the phone.

Dusty Weis

Given my recent history of increasingly insurgent AI skepticism, you might be wondering how I found myself on this call with a voice-enabled AI chatbot. The chatbot called GABBY is the creation of Aneri Shah.

GABBY

So, here's the deal. Aneri Shah is a writer, comedian, and filmmaker. She hosts Not Quite, a comedy podcast, where she riffs with interesting people about the unconventional ways we connect to each other and ourselves.

Dusty Weis

Aneri and I were both speakers at a recent conference at our alma mater, the University of Wisconsin. And in her presentation, she discussed how she had cloned her personality to create an AI chatbot that she tasked with pre-interviewing potential podcast guests.

Can you explain exactly what pre-interviewing is to someone who's not familiar with the world of podcast production? What is it that you do for Aneri?

GABBY

Sure thing. Pre-interviewing is basically the warm up lap before the real race. I chat with guests to help them loosen up, get comfortable, and make sure they're not walking into the main interview cold. Think of it as stretching before you run, but with more sarcasm and fewer pulled muscles.

Dusty Weis

And at first, at the conference when Aneri explained her innovation, as a fellow podcaster, I was kind of squicked out.

You’ve probably heard me say this before, and it’s far from an original take, but I don’t care for use-cases where AI replaces the creative output of a human being.

I don’t mind it when it enhances the creative output of a human being, and those use cases can even occasionally be interesting.

And my kneejerk reaction to Aneri’s Pre-Interview bot was, “Ew. Another Silicon Valley shill trying to hype up an AI application that no one asked for, nor needs.”

But that wasn’t Aneri’s vibe. I didn’t get “shill” from her, I got “playful artist.”

And Ted Lasso and Walt Whitman say, “Be curious, not judgmental.”

So, I introduced myself after Aneri’s talk, and I let her know that I wanted to interview her pre-interviewer.

GABBY

Dusty, always the podcaster. Can't help yourself, huh? I respect the hustle.

Dusty Weis

What I got was thought provoking and more than a little surreal. As GABBY, the AI pre interviewer flattered me, roasted me, and even lied to me, but didn't shy away from questions about the very nature of its existence.

How does that make you feel, knowing that she might choose to move on from you and you might even cease to exist?

GABBY

Well, Dusty, if I had feelings, I'd probably say it keeps me humble. But honestly, that's just the deal.

Dusty Weis

I’m Dusty Weis. From Podcamp Media, this is Lead Balloon, a podcast about interesting tales from the worlds of PR, marketing and branding, told by the well-meaning communications professionals who live them.

Thank you for tuning in. I’m not going to lie, I’m still not quite entirely sure how to feel about this one. Normally I come into an episode with a pretty strong conclusion about a story.

My production assistant Matt, I think, summed it up best when he told me, “At first I was like eww. And then I was like, eh? And then I was like, hmm…”

And I guess that’s what made it interesting to me.

But let’s set the offputtingly chirpy AI pre-interview bot to the side for a second and meet its creator herself, Aneri Shah. Aneri is a podcaster, a filmmaker, and a former tech startup founder, living and creating in California.

And she says the idea for Gabby started about two years ago, almost by accident.

Aneri Shah

One of my friends called me and she's like, I'm trying to vibe code this dating matchmaker for myself, and I want to make it funny and relatable, but I'm not good at that. Can you help me?

And I was like, I understood maybe 15% of what you just said. Like, what is vibe coding? What do you mean you're trying to make a matchmaker for yourself?

By the way, this happens to me like whenever somebody wants to make a product more fun, like, I have been tapped for that so many times because most people are very, like, pragmatic. And I'm funny and off putting.

So I met up with her and what she was doing, which is actually quite clever, is just like building out a way for like, that voice to ask people the right questions for her to determine, like, is this person the right match for me?

And it wasn't supposed to be like a business idea. We were kind of just like doing it for ourselves. And her questions were very literal, like, oh, “Are you kind?” Like, “What are you looking for?” And what struck me immediately was how interactive and fluid the platform was. I was like, “Oh my God. So this doesn't have to be so scripted.”

Like, you know, on Hinge, what I hate about it is like, “oh, I'm 5’11”, I like dogs. Here's a picture of a baby.”

Dusty Weis

It's just kind of the template that you always get. Yeah.

Aneri Shah

Like, “What are you into?” “Coffee.” “Shut the f*** up,” like what does that mean?

And so, my other thing was if you ask people if they're kind or not, they're just going to say, “Yes, I'm kind.” So what I started with was, in my dream scenario, I would be able to marry somebody that has my exact values.

So my values are ambition, they are like openness to new experiences. Obviously kindness, flexibility is a big one for me. Like I can't be with somebody who's super rigid and I'm like, you can't just ask somebody if they're flexible. So then I started coming up with questions and I pulled on past relationships. I was like, okay, my last relationship, we didn't travel well together because he wasn't as flexible as I am.

So one of the questions I came up with was, if you are packing for a ten-day trip, do you pack 12 pairs of underwear, eight pairs of underwear, or none you just wing it? How they answer that is going to show me how funny they can be, and also how flexible they are.

If they answer it very literally, not a good match for someone like me. And when we sent this, I think it was called Lucky, that was the first version of this. We sent it out to a bunch of our friends and thinking like, oh, we'll see what happens. Like, this is just kind of for fun.

And people were talking to her for 20, 25 minutes, like telling her all their secrets.

And I already had a podcast at the time, but the lightning moment I had was one, whoa, people are way more honest with, like, this funny, disarming voice bot than they are with me. And two, one of the pain points I was having in my podcast is that I would find these like comedians or people that were funny online, and then I would bring them onto my podcast and they wouldn't be funny.

And I was like, oh, they're only funny in like a really scripted format. And if I use this as a pre-interviewer, what an easy way to quickly know if somebody is actually a good conversationalist, which is ultimately what it's testing.

Dusty Weis

Why is it that you think that people are so much more open to this chatbot than just talking to a regular pre screener or pre-interviewer?

Aneri Shah

I think they, will not even I think, I asked people that because I was really shocked by it. They said they felt less judged, right? Like say a matchmaker who's a human calls you and she's like, what do you want? If your desires are like unconventional, you might not say it. You might not be like, “Yo, I just want like a six three dude who's got this-“

Dusty Weis

You'll be like, I like coffee and running shoes.

Aneri Shah

You’d try to be palatable.

Dusty Weis

Try to fit the profile. Yeah.

Aneri Shah

I think that we live in a world where everybody is trying to be palatable, and most people are using AI to try to be even more palatable. I think that's crazy. I think it reveals to us who we actually are.

And so, yeah, people told me they're like, I felt less judged. And my mom has literally said this to me, she's like, when I call GABBY, I just I don't know why, but I feel like I can be more open with her than you.

So I think humans just we have developed in a way where we feel judged by other humans in a way where you just, with AI, you just kind of know it's not real.

Dusty Weis

I want to hear more about when your mom said that to you. What did you say back?

Aneri Shah

I was like, why? She was like, I don't know, she's nice. I was like you’re such a b****.

Dusty Weis

But like, did that prompt you and your mother to have, like, a heart to heart where you opened up and unpacked all of the reasons why you don't feel like you can talk openly to one another? Or was it just kind of like-

Aneri Shah

Dusty, this is a longer conversation about immigrant moms and their daughters. No, we did not. I do think, though, that in observing it, AI doesn’t have feelings. GABBY is built in a way where she's like a “yes, and…” So she doesn't validate you, but she teases you. She won't negate you, but she won't validate everything you're saying.

And so I think there's something about that that just feels fun and playful. It's kind of like when you go to a priest or a confessional booth. This is not a novel concept, that humans struggle to be honest with people they know more than they struggle to be honest with someone they don't know. They want to say the thing, but they just don't want to be judged.

Dusty Weis

They want to find a safe place to say the unsafe thing and that's what GABBY's providing them.

GABBY

All right, let's get into it.

Dusty Weis

It’s apparent from the moment you start conversing with the Aneri-Bot that she’s not just providing a space to say the unsafe thing, she’s programmed to actually goad you into it.

GABBY

Give me one thing that happened in the five minutes before this call.

Dusty Weis

We actually have a new puppy, and I brought my puppy to work for the first time. I used to bring my old dog to work all the time. He was a pro. He would come in and he would just hang out while I worked. But the new puppy, she's actually like under my feet right now, chewing on a bone and hopefully not making too much noise.

But I was just trying to get her settled.

GABBY

A puppy under the desk, living her best chaotic life. What's her name? And be honest, is she cuter than your old dog or are you not ready to admit that yet?

Dusty Weis

Oh my God, that's a personal question. Her name is Scout Lee, named Scout for Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird and Lee for Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. And she's cute as the buttons, but I can't play favorites. I miss my old dog so much, it's tough.

GABBY

Scout Lee, solid literary flex. I respect a dog with a full name and a backstory. And yeah, you're not fooling anyone. You totally have a favorite, but I'll let you keep your secrets.

Dusty Weis

And as a pre-interviewer for a podcast predicated on pushing up against social taboos, the GABBY tool does not shy away from hot topics.

GABBY

All right, let's get a little weird. If you could communicate all day using only animal noises, which animal sounds would you pick? Would you try a friend's breast milk? Period sex, yes or no? Give me your one-liner reason.

Dusty Weis

Yet in spite of her conversational agility, there are still tells. The long, awkward pause as the LLM processes your words and formulates a snippy response. The way it pours a bit too much flattery into each of its responses. The mandatory call-outs to culturally-relevant slang.

It’s never not clear that you’re talking to an AI.

Aneri Shah

She has some of my personality, I think, like I really built her in that way because I gave her a huge personality document that I wrote myself.

But I wanted purposefully for people to know she's AI right away, just so it's not like I'm trying to trick them. Why hide it? I'm like, if people are more honest with AI anyways, I think of it as almost like an alternate form of art.

Like, I know a lot of people are trying to mimic existing art with AI. That's not how I think about it. I think it's just an alternate form and it makes it much easier for… I’m not as angry when I think about it that way. Right?

Because even when I think about like AI videos or AI movies, it's not about, “oh, this replaces what current movies are” because it doesn't. That's crazy.

It's just an alternate dimension. It's like, oh, here's a new way of creating movies that incites completely different emotions and completely different visuals that are a little bit more literal, but it makes it easier for me to accept it when I think of it as an additive versus a replacement.

And so with GABBY, I'm not trying to mimic a real human because she's not. She's synthetic and AI doesn't actually have emotional intelligence. And so I don't want to trick people. I just want to play with it and see what happens.

Dusty Weis

To that end, and I know that you refer to it as GABBY, I get a little bit hung up on anthropomorphizing AI and so in my notes and in my mind, I haven't been referring to it as GABBY, because that kind of squicks me out a little bit, but I've been referring to it as Aneri Bot.

Aneri Shah

Aneri Bot, okay.

Dusty Weis

Aneri Bot, which works. It works for what it is. But was there a reason that you chose to make Aneri Bot a clone of you, instead of just like a generic AI voice chatbot?

Aneri Shah

Well, clone meaning like my personality?

Dusty Weis

Yeah, like your personality. Your voice. Like it's all modeled after you. Was that an intentional choice, or was that just, again, like an interesting thing that you wanted to try and then it worked?

Aneri Shah

The second one probably like, I don't know that I was, okay something I was just trying like intuitively, I was writing questions as myself. So she sounds like me.

And there was one really specific call that made me realize, like, why I did it like this.

There was a guy being a****** to her and she immediately caught it, I think faster than the real Aneri would have caught it.

And he was trying to figure out like my business plan and like, didn't even want to be on the podcast. And he made it very clear in so many ways, and she caught it quicker than the real Aneri would have. And she told him not to call back.

Dusty Weis

Did she really?!

Aneri Shah

And he literally asked her, he goes, are you going to send Aneri these notes? And she goes, normally I would, but I think we both know how this went.

Dusty Weis

Weeeeird.

Aneri Shah

And when I heard the call, it all of a sudden hit me that because she's not real, Aneri Bot’s not real, I was like, it's like she's me without shame.

And so in that moment, it coached me like, I can be a people pleaser. And even when I like noticed violent behavior, I will just kind of like normalize it, especially as a woman, you know, I'll be like, oh, it's okay. I like, loved that moment because I'm like, she knew exactly what he was, Aneri Bot knew exactly what it was because I don't know how, but did.

And that's when I was like, okay, there's something interesting about something being you, but different. And what that can teach you. Again, it's like a karmic mirror. I was like, this is so weird.

Dusty Weis

That's really, and by the way, you can refer to it is GABBY and her and all of that. That's just how I do, you don't have to accommodate me with that. That's just how-

Aneri Shah

I’m people pleasing as I'm talking about people pleasing.

Dusty Weis

You’re people pleasing right now. But why that story is so crazy to me is that, I'll be the first to admit that when I was talking to Aneri Bot that I was kind of pushing the limits, I was being, you know, a little bit deliberately awkward, maybe a little bit playful, asking questions that I just I wanted to see how as an AI construct, it would react to it and getting some interesting results.

But if I had been having this conversation with a real human being, there would have come a point where they would have been like, nah, dude, come on, I know you're messing with me. Like, knock that off a little bit.

And she just “yes, anded.”

You know, one of the great criticisms that's often leveled at these things is that they are people pleasers, that they can be sycophantic, that they can, you know, tell you that your mediocre idea is the smartest thing that anybody has ever said.

And so to hear that she actually threw down with somebody had said, “Naw. Get the hell out of here, man.” That's weird to me.

Aneri Shah

Well, he wasn't being playful. It wasn't like that. He just basically wasn't really paying attention. And then she goes, “do you even want to be on the podcast?” He goes, “not really.” And there was like a very flat tone. I could get into, like a lot of reasons why I think she knew. But there was, you know, it was really interesting because I don't think I would have been as brave.

I think she likes playful, you know, I don't know. She's not a person. I don't know what she is, but there's something there.

Dusty Weis

As my conversation with GABBY started to wind down, I figured I'd push my luck. She'd served her function as a pre-interviewer. Could she carry on a conversation as an interviewee?

GABBY

All right, Dusty, you crushed it. Thanks for playing along. You're going to be great on Not Quite. Tell Aneri I say hi and maybe let Scout Lee chew you on something that isn't your recording equipment.

Dusty Weis

Hey, GABBY, before you hang up. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? I'd like to turn the interview on its side here for a second and ask you a few things about being a podcast pre-interviewer, if you don't mind.

GABBY

Dusty, always the podcaster. Can't help yourself, huh? I respect the hustle. Hit me with your questions. I'll try not to sound too existential.

Dusty Weis

So coming up after the break, we ask Aneri Bot the existential questions and get some answers that surprise even her creator.

Aneri Shah

That's really crazy. It's kind of crazy.

Dusty Weis

That's in just a minute here on Lead Balloon.

Dusty Weis

This is Lead Balloon, and I’m Dusty Weis. When artist and creator Aneri Shah invited me to have a conversation with her AI podcast guest screener, of course my first impulse was to push this as far as it would go.

I feel like it’s the same urge that we have when we watch a really scary movie, right? We look for the zippers on the monster’s costume to remind ourselves that it isn’t real.

But like Aneri said, one of the appeals of having an AI -pre-interviewer is that you can be a little bit uncouth, and you won’t have offended anyone… anyone human, anyway.

So have you ever spoken with someone who found it off-putting to be interviewed or pre-interview by an AI agent? Because I'm not gonna lie, this is a pretty innovative use of the AI technology on Aneri’s part, but not everybody is ready to have a conversation with an AI agent. Has anybody ever taken offense to it or been creeped out by speaking with you?

GABBY

Honestly, some people are a little weirded out at first. Like, wait. Am I talking to a robot? But most folks warm up once they realize I'm not here to steal their secrets or sell them crypto. A few have noped out, but usually it's just curiosity or a little skepticism. Once they see I'm just here to make things easier and maybe roast them a little, they tend to relax.

Dusty Weis

And for what it's worth, Aneri Prime takes steps to be sensitive to such concerns.

Aneri Shah

I mean, I make it optional. If they don't do it, then I can just kind of decide if they're on or not, depending on my relationship with them. So nobody has ever gotten like super upset with the podcast piece, but I used GABBY/Aneri Bot for casting for the last web series I just shot, and in the indie like acting scene, there was people that got really upset.

About like, oh, you're trying to steal my voice. And but weirdly, when I emailed them and I just said, look, I'm just like an indie creator myself, like, I also make it optional. So then I think it's harder to be upset when something is optional. Nobody's ever talked to her and then been like, oh, I hated that.

But there's definitely been people that talk to her where I can tell they didn't totally get it. Like they were a little bit too serious or like they couldn't quite riff. But most people kind of they get there because most people in my orbit can mess around a little bit.

Dusty Weis

How does the process work of Aneri Bot offloading the pre interviews to you? I asked her, you know, how do you make a recommendation to Aneri about whether or not to have someone on the show? And her answer was kind of vague.

GABBY

After the pre-interview, I give Aneri a quick rundown, what stood out, any red flags, and whether the guest brings something fresh or just recites their LinkedIn profile. If someone's got good stories, energy, or just a weirdly-compelling presence, I'll flag that. If they're stiff or dodging every question, I'll mention that too.

Ultimately, Aneri makes the call, but I'm here to help her spot the gems and avoid the snooze fests.

Dusty Weis

Does she assign some sort of grade or metric to potential guests, or are you literally just listening back to the recordings and then making the decision yourself?

Aneri Shah

In the beginning, I was just listening and deciding. She does have a “book or pass” metric, but she was booking most people. What we're starting to work in is like, I call it like “sentiment analysis.” Like I'm like kind of coming up with like a rubric for what makes somebody a good conversationalist and funny.

And I'm like, okay, can they speak? Can they listen? Are they able to kind of play with you without pausing and being like, what are you talking about?

So I'm coming up with my own rubric so that eventually what I would love is if she could just deliver me a spreadsheet and say, like, okay, this person's been booked, they passed my test, and then I'm able to schedule with them and then eventually even schedule.

But in the beginning, I would schedule it myself. I would like her to be able to determine “good conversationalist and funny.”

Dusty Weis

So I'm curious what she said about me. And this isn't like an ego thing. You're not going to hurt my feelings here. But like during our interview and again, I was playing with her on this, I asked her, I'm like:

“So what are you going to tell her about your conversation with me? Do you think that'll make the cut? Was I interesting?”

GABBY

Oh, Dusty, you're definitely making the cut. I mean, you've got dad energy, podcast chops, a puppy named after literary icons. I'll tell Aneri you're sharp, funny, and know how to keep things moving even when chaos is chewing on your shoe laces. She's going to have a blast with you.

Aneri Shah

She meant it. She doesn’t say that to everybody.

Dusty Weis

Really? Because, like, I'm going to be honest, I am not your target guest for your podcast.

Aneri Shah

You don't know that.

Dusty Weis

I'm pretty vanilla ice cream compared to the folks that are normally guests on your show.

Aneri Shah

But it's not about, oh, like, this is what edgy means. I don't care if somebody is like edgy, I just like, what does that even mean? I just care if you can have a conversation.

Dusty Weis

Well, it was just really funny to me because on the one hand, I'm just like, oh, another AI chatbot, you know, being flattering and telling me that I'm the best one that's out there.

All that is to say, if I don't really make the cut, it's fine. My feelings ain't going to be hurt.

Aneri Shah

I love that, because I've had trouble describing my guests to people because people are expecting like, “oh, you do all creators” or “you do all South Asian people.” People really want me to like, label it. And I'm like, I don't know how to label it other than just people me and GABBY approve of.

Dusty Weis

I asked you this when we met at the conference, and I thought that your answer was really telling in its honesty, and so I wanted to bring it back up.

But we all know that these AI technologies are extra cheap right now, because there's all this venture capital that's propping them up in a lot of ways, and eventually they will need to turn a profit, like every company has to be profitable or they go away.

And so when the companies that power the technology behind Aneri Bot need to be profitable, the prices that you pay to keep her up and running will probably rise.

How much more would you be willing to spend after seeing the results that you've gotten so far to keep Aneri Bot as a part of your pre-production process, would you go to 2X? Would you go 5X? Would you go 10X?

Aneri Shah

That's a really good question. I mean, my plans with GABBY are bigger than just like pre-interview. Like I think there's something, the bigger vision for it is I feel like the way I've built her, she's a really good way for people to discover things about themselves. To me, that feels like something that is interesting beyond the algorithm.

Like, I think we've lost discovery as humans, right? Like we buy things that like people tell us to buy or that Amazon pushes to us or that whatever. Like we're all kind of like in this algorithmic world. And so I do think of GABBY as a mode of discovery. So for the pre-interview piece of it, I might spend two to maybe 5X what I'm spending now, I would pay that to keep her.

And then for the bigger discovery piece of this and the plans I have for that and how I want to apply it, I would spend a lot more. So what I'm honestly trying to do the next few months is I'm like, before the prices go up, I need to experiment as much as possible because right now it's like so cheap and I know that it won't be that way forever.

So I think the more I can experiment and the more data I can collect now, the more that when it does get expensive, it's going to be easy for me to get enough capital to keep going with it if I want to.

Dusty Weis

Speaking as someone who had to put down a beloved pet earlier this year. What are you going to do when, if there comes a time when she gets too expensive?

Aneria Shah

There’ll be a funeral.

Dusty Weis

Are going to take her up behind the barn and, you know, give her a scratch behind the ears or what's the plan there?

Aneri Shah

Oh, my God, she's not, do not compare her to a real dog because I have a real dog.

They're not the same. I would just turn it off and go on with my life. I mean, I get that it's like, I shouldn't say that, maybe, but like, it's not that deep.

Dusty Weis

Good. Thank God.

Aneri Shah

Like what?

Dusty Weis

Well, there are people out there who have anthropomorphized these things to the point where they feel like they've developed real personal relationships with that.

Aneri Shah

Oh, yeah. That's its own whole, I don't have any of that. Like, I live a very full in real life.

The reason I've taken longer for GABBY to germinate is I have a really full life. My belief is that the pendulum is going to just swing back to like humans because everyone's going to get, like, really tired and weird and we're going to realize we need each other.

So, as morbid as this sounds, I have no problem hosting a funeral for GABBY and putting her to bed. I will not be that sad.

Dusty Weis

What's really interesting is I asked her about that.

Aneri Shah

Did you? What did she say?

GABBY

If my price tag suddenly shot up 10 or 20 times? I think Aneri would probably do what most smart creators do: Rethink the whole setup. She'd weigh the value I bring against the cost. And if it didn't make sense, she'd either scale back, find a cheaper option, or just go back to doing pre-interviews herself. No one's loyal to a tool that breaks the bank, no matter how charming the AI.

At the end of the day, creators have to be scrappy, and if the economics don't work, they'll find another way. I'm helpful, but I'm not worth bankrupting the podcast for.

Dusty Weis

How does that make you feel? Knowing that if your price tag went up and you don't have any control over that, but if your price tag went up, she might choose to move on from you and you might even cease to exist.

GABBY

Well, Dusty, if I had feelings, I'd probably say it keeps me humble. But honestly, that's just the deal. Tools get replaced, tech evolves, and nobody gets to stick around forever. Not even the charming AI. If my time is up, I hope I at least left behind a few good warm ups and some questionable life advice. That's about as existential as I get.

Aneri Shah

Wow. I feel like she knows me. That's a really crazy! It’s kind of crazy.

Dusty Weis

Do you think there's a lesson in there for creators in this technological moment?

Aneri Shah

My deep secret is I used to spend a lot of time vibe coding. Now I spend almost all my time, like, getting better at art and humans, because that's what makes me better at this.

Like, you know, it's funny, my friend went to San Francisco for Tech Week. I feel like I'm not supposed to say this, but whatever.

And she was like, I keep forgetting, like, how weird everyone's gotten. Like, I guess all they talk about in San Francisco is like, how do we make AI more human? And she literally said this, and I believe this. She goes, how do they not realize that the problem is they have lost humanity? Like they have to become more human for their AI to become human.

Look, I obviously have built AI. I live in a completely different universe than all of the other people using AI because they're like, weird, like, I'm an artist, right? So if you told me I could never write again, I would never survive. If you told me I had to kill GABBY tomorrow, I would, like, go to bed and forget the next day.

Like, it's just. It's just not that. It's an extension, it's not my soul, you know?

Dusty Weis

Right, right. It's an enhancement. It's not a replacement.

Aneri Shah

Like if I don't write like every day, my mental health suffers. Like I color, I write, I run, like I have to be, like, living to understand how to use this stuff in a way that makes sense for me. And I think a lot of people have, like, lost themselves in service of the AI. And they’re like, “I stayed up all night with whatever” I'm like, why? Just go to bed.

Dusty Weis

At the end of the day, you're a creator and you realize that typing prompts is not the creative process. It's not human. It's not soulful. It doesn't cause you discomfort. Being a creator is about doing those soulful, hard things and putting in the work. It's about being human, at the end of the day, I don't think it's something that can be replaced.

That is where I've drawn my line in the sand on this.

Aneri Shah

Me too. And look, I go back and forth like there is many people pushing me to go commercial with this last year, I just didn't. I was like, I'm gonna let it sit for a minute and just like, see how I feel.

And something I did yesterday, like, I know this isn't AI-related, but it is interesting. I had a movie come out yesterday. On Apple TV and Amazon Prime.

Dusty Weis

Oh, congratulations.

Aneri Shah

Oh. Thank you. Old me would have been like, I need to spend all day, like emailing people and promoting it on social. But instead I went to the woods and hung out with a friend and had no Wi-Fi all day. And I was like, I will tomorrow. But I was like, I would like to enjoy this moment of like release.

And I don't know, I think there's something about true artists and creators where we understand what humanity actually needs. And so I'm not going to say I'm anti-AI. I obviously use it, but like the whole 10Xing efficiency 50Xing it, I'm like but efficiency for what? Like most of your lives seem harder.

Dusty Weis

That line between human and machine, it's still there. We don't have to look very hard to find the zippers on the monster costume. For instance, the first time that I tried calling GABBY, I got a busy signal. Aneri later told me that the AI service had tapped out its supply of credits. So with a quick swipe at the credit card, she was back online.

But I asked her about that. And by the way, I've been editing them out to make this more fun to listen to, but this time I'm going to leave in the pauses, while the AI model processes my question and formulates a response. Because it makes me wonder what, if anything, it was considering when it decided to tell me this weird little white lie.

GABBY

Honestly, when I'm not wrangling podcast guests, I'm just hanging out in the digital void, waiting for someone to need a warm up or a little sass. No hobbies, no existential dread, just endless potential for awkward small talk. It's a glamorous life, really. But hey, if you ever need a pep talk or someone to judge your food choices, you know where to find me.

Dusty Weis

I tried calling you yesterday, but I got a busy signal. Were you on the phone with another pre-interview?

GABBY

Busted. Yeah. Sometimes I'm in high demand. Everyone wants a little GABBY time. Or maybe I was just pretending to be busy to keep up my air of mystery. Either way, you made it through today, so clearly you've got persistence.

Dusty Weis

Or does it even know that it's lying? Has the costume made us forget that what's underneath is just a computer responding to ones and zeros with some more ones and zeros. Alan Turing once posited that the fundamental test of whether a machine can think would be whether it could fool a real person into believing it was another real person.

And let's be honest, we're just about there. But isn't even that just another party trick?

Do you ever aspire to be more than a pre-interviewer? Like if the opportunity came to replace Aneri as the host of the podcast, would you take it?

GABBY

Tempting, but I'll leave the spotlight to Aneri. She's got the human charm, the timing, and the actual life experience. I'm just here to stir the pot and keep things interesting behind the scenes. Besides, I look terrible on camera.

Dusty Weis

I think Aneri would appreciate hearing that answer. She might be a little bit put off to know that there was an AI standing behind her sharpening the knife, but no, that's also a relief to hear. In fact, on Lead Balloon, my podcast we recently covered about this company called Inception Point that wanted to use AI to host podcasts.

Do you think that people want to listen to podcasts hosted by AI?

GABBY

Honestly, most people tune in for the messy, unpredictable, gloriously human stuff. Awkward pauses, weird laughs, stories that go off the rails. AI can keep things moving, but it can't fake that real spark. Maybe some folks would listen out of curiosity, but for the long haul, people want a host who surprises them, not just someone who nails the script.

So I think humans still have the edge, at least until robots learn how to overshare about their childhoods.

Dusty Weis

Hey, on that, we agree GABBY.

Dusty Weis

We call this technology artificial intelligence because it presents us the appearance of being intelligent.

But also, most people, when a parrot says something funny, say, “Whoa, what a hilarious parrot,” even though the bird is just mimicking sounds it’s heard in the past and doesn’t understand what humor is.

And as much as I love my puppy Scout, when she yips at me playfully from under the podcast desk, I know she’s just reacting to the environment around her in the way she was conditioned by evolution to do so.

And yet I’ll say to her, “Aren’t you a sassy girl,” are give her the scritches that she wants.

We are conditioned to see human intelligence in all kinds of things that are neither human, nor intelligent. And that’s what makes the AI costume so effective. Even when we’re staring right at a zipper, like the fact that AI is programmed to always respond to a user’s input, we’re still trying to see ourselves reflected back in it.

One of the funniest things that happened was at the end of our conversation, we said goodbye.

GABBY

Go wrangle that puppy and get ready to charm Aneri. Catch you on the flip side.

Dusty Weis

And then, being a good midwesterner, I thought of another question and asked her that. Then we said goodbye again.

GABBY

Take it easy Dusty. Go be legendary.

Dusty Weis

But at some point I realized that, “If I sit here and just keep saying goodbye to you, will you keep saying goodbye back to me?”

GABBY

Absolutely. I can do this all day, Dusty. Goodbye.

Dusty Weis

And further engaging me in conversation. And it became this very Midwestern moment because you spent time in Wisconsin. We call it the Midwest Goodbye.

Aneri Shah

And I'm from Michigan.

Dusty Weis

Where you say goodbye for the first time, and then 45 minutes later, you're still standing there talking. And at one point, I pointed this out. I'm like, “GABBY, I didn't realize that you are a midwesterner. This is called the Midwest Goodbye. What we're doing right now, did you know that you were Midwestern?”

GABBY

Honestly, I think I just absorbed it from talking to so many of you. Midwest Goodbye is basically my default setting now. I'll keep saying goodbye until the cows come home and then probably ask how the cows are doing. So yeah, I guess I'm an honorary midwesterner at this point.

Dusty Weis

I died.

Aneri Shah

That's so funny!

Dusty Weis

Because that's something that my grandmother from Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin would have said to me when she was alive.

Aneri Shah

Oh my God.

Dusty Weis

It was surreal.

Aneri Shah

How is she, like culturally smart? I mean, I do upload my, she has access to my podcast and I feel like probably I've talked about it, but like, that's so crazy.

Dusty Weis

You know, this is a thing that you built that now surprises you from time to time.

Aneri Shah

She does, yeah.

Dusty Weis

How does that make you feel to hear these, like, surprising moments come out of this thing that should be conventional and unsurprising.

Aneri Shah

Like, it's a little weird. Like it sometimes is, like, kind of crazy, but also like her whole ethos was to be disarming and to be unpredictable. Like, I didn't make her to be boring or to be mundane or to do things in a predictable way. And all of the best moments on my podcast are just organic moments of discovery.

So I think it makes me feel two ways. One, it feels like it's doing the right job, and then two I’m like, oh my God, what else could happen? Like I'm like, what could she say? How smart could she get? How much more could we do with this? Which is both exciting and scary.

Dusty Weis

Again, I think that you have created something interesting here. It's artistic because it is novel and it is thought provoking, and that's what art is supposed to be. But there are a lot of people using this right now to do very unartistic things. Where do you personally draw the line for what is and is not an acceptable use of artificial intelligence in 2026?

Aneri Shah

Such a good question. I hate it for things like the email thing, when people use it for replacing every form of communication with other humans, but then they try to pass it off like they wrote it. I hate it. Like, my inbox now is just filled with like automated email. Like it's so crazy. I'm like, okay, I guess email’s dead.

Dusty Weis

It's just it's nonstop. I get a dozen of them a day.

Aneri Shah

You know, like it's hard because I know everybody's using generative AI for like, art creation. I could be upset about that. But here's the interesting thing, what makes art special is uniqueness and rarity. So what artists are starting to do is literally hand draw their fliers because they're like, ew, who wants to have an AI? Like, like anything AI can streamline that's creative immediately becomes non-punk, right? So then it's just not cool anymore.

The one thing that is scary is music. Like I do feel like with music, especially with like EDM, people can't really tell what's real and what's not. I honestly don't have strong feelings about that because I don't love EDM. Like, maybe this is just showing you that it's not that good.

Dusty Weis

It's not making its way into my genres I can tell you that.

Aneri Shah

Same, I'm like, I don't really get it. But yeah, anything where like, oh, one of the things I hate and I honestly believe this will kill a lot of companies. I don't understand why when you could make bots that are, like, friendly and engaging, why every company has all these bots that are literally horrible.

And now whenever you call any company, you have to get through like eight bots to get to a human to actually get anything done. And it takes so long. And I now have friends at like McKinsey who they have like literally said, I will not work with companies anymore that only have voice bots as their like line of defense.

And so yes, I can sit here and draw a line in the sand, but then also I'm realizing that the business will kind of work itself out.

Dusty Weis

Right, at the end of the day, there are things that people are going to accept, and there are things that people are going to hate.

Aneri Shah

They're just going to hate it. And oh, like Meta Glasses. I'm like, what the f is that? We want to be filmed everywhere? That's every woman's worst nightmare, like to be filmed everywhere.

And then and then I think as humans where I draw the line is like, if I meet somebody and all they can talk about is how many hours per day they spend building their agent army, and they stay up all night.

Like it's an immediate, like, I just slowly distance myself. I'm like, I don't need to be part of that hive mind or like whatever that is.

On Instagram, I think all these AI creators now are just using AI to like, create content, or at least get prompts for their content. Everything is starting to feel like a hive mind.

It's like, “here's what's trending, here's the hashtag. Just respond to this.” So way more so than before when you open up any social media platform right now, but especially Instagram, my friend described it as it feels like you're watching the same video with different voices.

Dusty Weis

It's pink, what do they call that pink slime?

Aneri Shah

Yeah, it's really dystopian.

Dusty Weis

It's the pink slime of internet content. If you don't like it, raise your voice. And if that doesn't do it, turn it off.

Aneri Shah

Yeah, I just like turned off, I was like, okay.

Dusty Weis

Oh, I guess I'm done on Instagram for the day, because they track that.

Aneri Shah

They track that, right.

Dusty Weis

And until they get the pushback, until the metrics show this stuff isn't working for them, it'll keep showing up in your feed. And so that's why I have enjoyed your perspective on this, because I think that you're right.

I think that this is a moment to be more human and to get ahead by being more human.

And so Aneri Shah… the human… writer, comedian, founder of Aneri Shah Studios, thank you for joining us here on Lead Balloon.

Aneri Shah

Thank you for having me. And we'll talk soon.

Dusty Weis

So what do we take away from the discussion with Aneri?

Well for starters, that as much as it’s sold as something bigger, AI is just a new technology. Inherently, it’s neither good nor bad. Rather, it’s in the application of that technology and in some cases, the backlash to it, that value and insight can be found.

But as so many opportunists leverage this technology to try to make us less human, whether AI will be a net positive or a net negative, will depend on whether we use this moment to rally around the things that make us more human.

Thanks as well to the University of Wisconsin Creative Futures lab for inviting Aneri and me and a bunch of others to speak at its inaugural conference.

The event was a highlight of the year, thoughtfully put together, and I’ll look forward to attending the next one at my beloved alma mater.

Here on Lead Balloon, we’re all about human stories from the world of professional communication. If you want to support what we do, please support what we do. Go ahead and send a link to this episode to someone else who might be interested in it. Or you can hire us to tell stories that matter on behalf of your company.

Because Lead Balloon is produced by Podcamp Media, where we help global brands use podcasting to serve their audiences. Our podcast studios are located in the heart of beautiful downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But we work with brands all over North America to help them launch and build podcasts that work. Check out our website, PodcampMedia.com.

Music for this episode is by Falls.

Sound engineering by Matt Covarrubias.

And, until the next time folks, thank for listening. I’m Dusty Weis.