Caloroga Media, the New York podcast company that has built a catalog of short daily shows with AI voices, formally announced on Tuesday that its AI production studio Linnet is open to the public with no waitlist or invitation, pitching it to independent podcasters who cannot afford the video production now expected of shows.

“Video podcasts have taken off, but unless you have big budgets like the big streaming services do, it’s hard for the smaller guys to keep up,” co-founder John McDermott said in the release. “Independent creators have a finite amount of resources, time, and money, so it was important to us for Linnet to provide the tools needed to transform creators’ audio podcasts into visual ones, while still keeping the creator in control of the finished product.” Co-founder Mark Francis said the company is opening the studio “because the best way to refine her is to put her in the hands of more creators.”

Linnet puts scripting, AI voices, music, artwork, a 24-track audio editor, video editing and publishing in one browser tab. Its “God Mode” turns a single prompt into a draft episode on an editable timeline, and its audio-to-video feature adds clips, captions and graphics to an existing recording for YouTube and social platforms. The public beta began on November 2, as Net Influencer reported in its profile of the studio. Paid plans start at $16 a month, and the Starter and Creator tiers are free until December 1. Linnet publishes directly to Podigee, Buzzsprout and Transistor.fm, which a Caloroga representative said are “the only hosting companies that provide affordable video API access.”

Video Has Raised the Cost of Running a Show

Edison Research reported in June that video podcast consumption overtook audio-only consumption for the first time in the third quarter of 2025, with 82% of U.S. weekly podcast consumers actively watching video against 78% listening to audio only. In Acast’s Podcast Pulse survey of 4,300 listeners across 13 markets, 88% said they consume both audio and video podcasts, up from 78% in 2025. Money is following the format: Spotify now shares premium subscription revenue with video creators through its Partner Program, which Flightcast cited when it began selling automated YouTube-to-Spotify distribution for $100 a month this month.

For a small audio show, that means paying for cameras, editing and visuals or missing the platforms where audiences watch. Caloroga made the opposite bet with its own catalog, which McDermott described to Net Influencer in August as choosing short-form audio over long-form video. Linnet is its attempt to add video to audio-first shows with AI tools that a single producer can run.

Linnet Enters a Crowded Field of AI Production Tools

The established editors are moving in the same direction. Descript, which built its business on editing audio and video by editing a transcript, offers an AI voice-cloning tool called Overdub, according to its website. Riverside, best known for remote recording, launched an “AI Twin” in September that generates video of a creator from a script, and added direct video publishing to Apple Podcasts in July, according to its product updates page.

At the far end of automation, Los Angeles studio Inception Point AI had produced 200,000 podcast episodes at a cost of about $1 each, CEO Jeanine Wright told the Los Angeles Times last December. Francis told Net Influencer that Linnet offers preset voices with no voice cloning, that God Mode output is meant to be edited before release, and that the company does not train AI models on creator content.

Listener attitudes put limits on how far that model can go. In Edison’s Podcast Consumer 2026 study, 69% of U.S. weekly podcast consumers approved of podcasts using generative AI to conduct research, while 25% approved of a show being hosted in an AI-generated voice. Sixty-two percent called AI a threat to the credibility of podcasts.

Caloroga says its own shows have passed 10 million downloads. The company has not disclosed how many creators have signed up since the beta opened, and Francis said Linnet will remain in beta while the company turns creator feedback into new features in 2027.

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