I was listening to Las Culturistas the other day and encountered something that stood out to me: the seemingly-new bumper from the podcast’s host network, iHeartPodcasts. The bumper included a tagline I hadn’t heard before, “Guaranteed Human.” This tagline seemed to be a direct response to the backlash that AI-generated content has received as generative AI technologies have advanced in the last few years. It was the first time in a while where I felt like I was completely distracted from what I was doing and had to rewind and re-listen to a podcast to make sure I heard something correctly. Normally, I listen to podcasts as “background noise” while I’m doing something else, but this tagline demanded my attention in that moment. I took to Google to see if anyone else had a moment like this and found that others had taken notice of the change and seemed to be embracing it with open arms.

According to reporting by the Los Angeles Times, the tagline “Guaranteed Human” is part of a marketing initiative from iHeartMedia (the parent organization of iHeartPodcasts) to assure its audiences that they are placing focus on human-generated content and abstaining from the use of generative AI to replace human creativity. This initiative impacts iHeartMedia’s podcasts as well as its radio stations and is expected to reach millions of people during its run.

It’s interesting to me see a larger media group rolling out a tagline like “Guaranteed Human,” particularly at the same time that competing large media groups seem to be doubling down on AI (most notably, Spotify). It feels like a smart move at a time when the masses are showing their disapproval for sloppy generative AI outputs replacing the works of creative humans (such as last year’s Coca-Cola holiday ad). I wonder about how long iHeartMedia will live by this tagline, or if it will silently pivot from being “Guaranteed Human” to “supported by AI” if and when the business decides that generative AI will improve profit margins. It feels easy to declare that you don’t use AI to muster virtual applause and support, but even easier to quietly move away from such a declaration when it feels more lucrative (particularly at the scale which iHeartMedia operates).