Steven Bartlett not only discusses AI on The Diary of a CEO, he also uses it to create entire podcasts, automate pitches, and more.
The podcast star recently raised an eight-figure investment round to found his own company, FlightStory. The company has about 100 employees and generated revenue of about $47 million last year.
FlightStory’s AI experiment began in a big way last year when Bartlett challenged his staff to a two-month competition to use AI agents in their work.
Isaac Martin, FlightStory’s director of innovation, said the competition was “a really tough test for us to dive deep into the space and see what works and see what we can do in a short amount of time.”
The pre-production team won a $20,000 prize in Bartlett’s competition to build a tool or agent that replaces or improves almost any part of a process. Bartlett said the contest saved the company $1.18 million.
Isaac Martin, Director of Innovation at FlightStory, is promoting AI-powered content through an initiative called “Project Gutenberg.” flight story
Since then, FlightStory has used AI across its operations, including pushing AI content called “Project Gutenberg” in honor of the founder of the printing press.
FlightStory executives spoke to Business Insider about the various ways their business unit, which is part of the company’s holding company Steven.com, is using AI.
They also talked about why, in the case of LinkedIn, the team refrains from using AI.
More ways FlightStory leverages AI
program: In its most ambitious creative application, FlightStory is producing a fully AI-animated video series for children ages 5 to 8 called “Steven’s World.” The show revolves around a young Bartlet going on adventures with his friends and uses input from podcast guests like Neil deGrasse Tyson. FlightStory said it is in talks with major streamers for distribution. The series evolved from an earlier AI-made podcast test, “100 CEOs,” which was hosted by an AI clone of Bartlett’s voice.
AI is also used to translate DOAC into 14 languages. Christiana Brenton, CRO and co-founder of FlightStory, said the Spanish translation was the biggest success story to date, generating 20.5 million plays or listens on Spotify and $200,000 in indirect gross advertising revenue.
Christiana Brenton, CRO and co-founder of FlightStory, sees AI as a way to expand the types of work her company can do. flight story
advertising revenue: On the commercial side, staff use custom AI tools to create proposals based on the brief, FlightStory authors, and past brand campaigns and proposals. In this way, FlightStory says it has shortened the process from about three days to a few hours. This has resulted in a 60% increase in average revenue contribution per employee across the company over the past two years.
speaker: FlightStory is redesigning its FlightSpeakers division, using conversational AI tools to reduce the time it takes to recommend speakers and check availability.
Taliyah Levine, who is leading the project, said the aim is to preserve the human elements that have long been part of business while transforming it with technology.
“I hope it ruffles some feathers,” she said.
socializing: FlightStory is launching a new unit, FlightSocials, in late 2025 to help creators like Colin, Samir and comedian Ali Siddiq distribute their clips on social media. Brenton said AI speeds up the process of creating clips, rating them, and recommending the next clip. This way, the company can post up to 15 clips per day per creator.
“This completely takes out the guesswork of humans having to decide which parts of this long episode to cut out,” she said.
FlightStory has also built an API called Creator Radar. This helps you connect to YouTube and other social platforms to identify creators who are more likely to be signed. API helped validate FlightStory’s decision to hire “Hot Smart Rich” host Maggie Sellers Lem, showing that she had an unusually strong community (women who self-identify as “HSR Angels”) relative to the size of her audience.
AI still has its limits
Research shows that independent creators are generally more eager to experiment with AI than traditional Hollywood studios and guilds.
For creators like Bartlett who aim to scale beyond themselves, AI offers a way to reach a larger audience without being limited by your time or energy.
Brenton said that while many companies are focused on using AI for efficiency, FlightStory sees AI as a way to “do things we couldn’t necessarily do before.”
Like many companies implementing AI, FlightStory says it’s not using AI to lay off people, but to free them up to focus on higher-value work.
FlightStory leaders also recognize that AI is not suitable for every use case.
For example, the company noticed that there were a lot of posts written by AI on LinkedIn and decided that human-written posts might have more emotional resonance, so it reduced its use of AI on LinkedIn. Bottom line: It takes more time to create, but it performs better than AI. Brenton said Bartlett and his team currently write all of the social copy personally.
“Ironically, we believe that is a unique advantage,” she said. “If you follow Stephen, you’ll notice that there are misspellings and mistakes that he doesn’t intentionally correct.”
FlightStory used AI to create a junior version of Stephen Bartlett for its new children’s show “Steven’s World.” flight story
We are also in the early stages of understanding the types of AI-generated content that audiences will accept.
AI episodes of “100 CEOs” have racked up ~35,000 views on YouTube, while Bartlett’s flagship podcast regularly garners hundreds of thousands of views per episode. While some praised it, others criticized the lack of humanity in the voice and said they preferred Bartlett’s interview style. FlightStory executives believe children are more receptive to AI-animated shows and that “Steven’s World” will introduce Bartlett’s brand to a new audience.
While the Spanish translation of “DOAC” has brought in additional viewers and revenue, not all of its podcasts share the same economic opportunity. Additionally, some people may be uncomfortable with AI dubbing podcasts that rely on a strong emotional connection with their audience.
When it comes to FlightStory’s most valuable asset, the “DOAC” podcast in which Bartlett interviews various celebrities, executives are adamant that the final edits are done by real people.
“When you create long-form content that reaches millions of people, the risk profile and stakes are higher,” Brenton said.
