Pocket FM Empowers Writers with AI Tools to Accelerate Audio Story Creation and Expand Globally

India-based audio series platform Pocket FM is leveraging AI to accelerate content creation and expand globally, aiming to become the Netflix of audio. The Lightspeed-backed startup has rolled out an AI writing tool called CoPilot to its writers, designed to enhance storytelling, generate cliffhangers, and streamline production. The tool helps transform narrative writing into dialogue-driven scripts, performs beat analysis to boost engagement based on genre, and offers features like shortening, expanding, and prompt-based text generation. CoPilot was built using insights from thousands of hours of user engagement data, enabling it to suggest stronger character conflicts, compelling episode endings, and appropriate background sound effects. It can also auto-generate character bios, relationship maps, and episode summaries to maintain narrative consistency. A built-in review function checks for plot holes, grammar issues, and provides feedback, helping writers refine their work faster. To support international growth, Pocket FM introduced adaptation tools that go beyond simple translation. These tools localize content by adjusting names, cultural references, and idioms to suit regional audiences. The feature was first tested in Germany, where it led to a significant increase in monthly in-app revenue—surpassing $700,000 in June—and reduced the time to enter a new market from 12–18 months to under three months. In the U.S., AI-assisted shows now account for 10% of total playtime and have generated $7 million in revenue over the past year, while cutting production costs by two to three times. The company now launches nearly 1,000 content pilots monthly, with AI helping scale output without sacrificing quality. Looking ahead, Pocket FM plans to launch its own large language model by next year, trained on its own content and integrated with writing, adaptation, dramatization, and context retention tools. This move aims to replace multiple smaller models with a single, more powerful system. However, AI adoption has brought challenges. The company has laid off employees and contractors across several rounds in the past year, and it faces lawsuits in California over labor and wage concerns. While Pocket FM says AI has not significantly impacted its creative community and has instead opened new opportunities, concerns remain about over-reliance on AI and the risk of “AI slop”—low-quality, formulaic content that could harm user discovery. To combat this, Pocket FM uses an AI-powered moderation system that checks for duplication, copyright issues, and content quality before content goes live. All shows receive equal visibility, with rankings driven by user engagement. The company argues that AI acts as a virtual writers’ room, allowing solo creators to produce more efficiently, with the focus shifting from full rewrites to targeted editing and refinement. While AI boosts speed and scale, the long-term impact on creative quality and writer compensation remains under scrutiny. Pocket FM maintains that AI enhances, rather than replaces, human creativity—enabling faster iteration based on real audience feedback.