From the news to the live channel
Tech After Dark is made with AI tools and checked by a person. This page explains plainly what is automated, what is not, and where every fact comes from.
In short
- The news comes from Engadget, GSMArena, TechPowerUp, The Verge, Apple Newsroom, Samsung Newsroom and Notebookcheck.
- Reviews are researched, not hands-on. The hosts have not held the products. A review is built from the maker's announcement and product page, the specs, and hands-on reviews from reliable outlets, credited by name; every page the research used is cited on the episode page, marked Research. The score is the show's opinion.
- The scripts are written by an AI model (Claude, by Anthropic) from those articles.
- The voices are synthetic, made with ElevenLabs text-to-speech (Kokoro when it is unavailable). No real person reads the lines.
- The hosts are original animated characters created for the show: Rocco, a raccoon, and Nova, a cat. They are not real people and not anyone's mascots.
- Automatic checks, not a manual review: every number and quote on screen is checked against the sources and every picture against the product before an episode airs. Episodes publish on their own; the producer watches them and fixes or takes down mistakes.
- Product pictures come from the makers' press pictures, reviewers' photos, retailers and video thumbnails, each checked to show the right product and credited on screen to its site.
- Artwork, such as posters and backgrounds, may be AI-generated. Some visuals in an episode are generated illustrations, and they are labelled as such on screen.
- The original articles are linked on every episode page. They are the source of truth.
How an episode is made
- News comes in. New articles and posts from Engadget, GSMArena, TechPowerUp, The Verge, Apple Newsroom, Samsung Newsroom and Notebookcheck are collected and grouped into stories, so the same announcement from several sites becomes one episode.
- Community posts are treated as leads. A community post is not a source of record, and the script says so. When the facts are checked on other pages, every page used is cited and linked on the episode page, marked Research. The post itself is linked too.
- A script is written. An AI model (Claude, by Anthropic) turns the articles into a short conversation between two hosts, sticking to what the sources say and crediting them.
- The hosts are voiced. The lines are read by Kokoro, an open-weight text-to-speech model, with one synthetic voice per host.
- The video is rendered. The animated studio, the hosts, captions and source credits are put together into a finished video.
- It is checked. Cards whose numbers or quotes do not match the sources are thrown out, pictures that do not clearly show the product never make it in, and the episode publishes on its own. The producer watches the channel and can correct or take down any episode.
- It goes on air. A new episode plays on the live channel at tech.afterdark.fm right after the one that is on, and stays in the archive with links to its sources.
Read the originals
A short spoken summary can miss nuance or get a detail wrong, even after review. Every episode page lists the articles and posts it is based on under Sources, with a link to each one, plus any pages the research used, marked Research. When something matters to you, such as a price, a release date, which countries a product ships to, or a spec, check the original article and the maker's own page.
The hosts
Rocco and Nova are original characters made for this show. They are fictional: they are not real people. Their voices are synthetic and their studio is animated.
Report a mistake
Spotted something wrong in an episode? Contact us with the episode link (it starts with https://tech.afterdark.fm/e/) and what needs fixing. Corrections are reviewed by the producer, and a wrong episode is fixed or taken down.
Credits
- News sources: Engadget, GSMArena, TechPowerUp, The Verge, Apple Newsroom, Samsung Newsroom, Notebookcheck. Their articles belong to their authors.
- Scripts: Claude by Anthropic.
- Voices: ElevenLabs, with Kokoro-82M text-to-speech (Apache 2.0) as the backup.
- Hosts and studio: original characters and animation made for Tech After Dark.
- Site art: the background art and textures are original, drawn for this site.