# Mercury Podcast Network: plus, too many ads, and what YouTube is doing about AI slop Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/podnews-weekly-review-1333070/mercury-podcast-network-plus-too-many-ads-and-what-youtube-is-doing-about-ai-slop Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/podnews-weekly-review-1333070/mercury-podcast-network-plus-too-many-ads-and-what-youtube-is-doing-about-ai-slop.md Podcast: [Podnews Weekly Review](https://stenobird.com/podcast/podnews-weekly-review-1333070) Published: 2026-02-06T04:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://op3.dev/e/www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/episodes/18633918-mercury-podcast-network-plus-too-many-ads-and-what-youtube-is-doing-about-ai-slop.mp3 Audio file: https://op3.dev/e/www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/episodes/18633918-mercury-podcast-network-plus-too-many-ads-and-what-youtube-is-doing-about-ai-slop.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/podnews-weekly-review-1333070/episodes/mercury-podcast-network-plus-too-many-ads-and-what-youtube-is-doing-about-ai-slop Duration seconds: 5491 ## Resource Send James and Sam a message or voicemail Sam and James talk with Liam Heffernan of Mercury; and cover all the latest news of the week. • Sony’s AI character podcasts and voice licensing risks • Video discovery leading to audio loyalty and why it matters • IAB’s AI scraping proposal and good bot vs bad bot • Apple’s downloads for transcripts and chapters and host costs • Voice Regen vs Auphonic and Buzzsprout Magic Mastering • YouTube’s AI slop problem and weak enforcement • Apple buying QAI... ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/podnews-weekly-review-1333070/episodes/mercury-podcast-network-plus-too-many-ads-and-what-youtube-is-doing-about-ai-slop/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/podnews-weekly-review-1333070/mercury-podcast-network-plus-too-many-ads-and-what-youtube-is-doing-about-ai-slop.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.