When was the last time you truly lost yourself in the simple act of walking? No destination, no urgency — just the curiosity of letting your feet lead you. We don’t remember either, and that’s why we created Walkcast.
It starts by generating a story based on where you are, and based on where you go, it keeps changing. It taps into the hidden details of your environment, revealing fascinating facts about the streets, landmarks, or history around you. But sometimes, it goes beyond reality, making stuff up. But does it matter if it’s real, as long as it’s a good story?
A storytelling engine
Walkcast runs thanks to what we coined as a “storytelling engine”. Unlike traditional podcasts or location-based apps, Walkcast is an attempt to rethink storytelling itself.
At its core is a system powered by a network of intelligent agents—a curator, an editor, and host – and yourself. The curator uncovers facts and trivia about your surroundings, while the editor weaves these details into a dynamic, ever-evolving script. The editor might throw in creative tangents or fictional twists, but the host, an AI-generated voice, narrates the story in real-time, adjusting tone and pacing to suit the unfolding narrative. All of this is influenced by you, your location and the direction you take as you listen.
An autonomous podcast
Walkcast runs on its own, without needing human intervention at all. It’s entirely user-funded, allowing listeners to pool their contributions and act as sponsors for specific episodes. In return, they get mentioned by the host during the episodes they support. When the credits run out, walkcast stops working for everyone, until new credits are added.
A Serendipitous Experience
There are no real controls in Walkcast except for yourself, where you are, and where you go. There is also no fixed flow or focus of what you will hear, as the network of agents decides what to talk about and how for each section. Sometimes it might feel like a city guide sharing facts (including invented ones) about your surroundings; other times, it might go off on a surreal and unexpected tangent inspired by where you are. Every experience is unique, unplanned and full of unexpected discoveries.
The Technology
Walkcast is a full-stack nodejs web app that employs a series of AI agents communicating with each other, running ChatGPT under the hood. It uses your geographic location to query Wikipedia and web search APIs, but no data is saved! Since AI generation costs money to run, it also allows users to sponsor future episodes and be mentioned in the audio podcast.
Why Walkcast?
Walkcast is a project started by creative company oio, who’s on a mission to make products and tools for a less-boring future. They do it by experimenting with future interactions, and lately, that involved plenty of artificial intelligence design work. Many of their projects are reshaping how we engage with AI, exploring new metaphors and mental models beyond the familiar chat interface, through playful products and narratives.
Everyone is trying to answer the same questions — what does the next interaction look like? What’s the right metaphor? And the folks at oio, who’ve been extensively working on these topics, try to answer some of these questions. Walkcast, with its Storytelling Engine, is just one of the many experiments they’re about to launch in this space.
About oio
Creative company oio is on a quest to create products and tools for a less-boring future. Founded by Matteo Loglio and Simone Rebaudengo in 2020, they are a small team pushing for an impact that outweighs their footprint, helping big companies, small startups and cultural institutions to shape future products. Through playful projects, open tools and educational content oio helps make technology less threatening and more approachable, for everyone. Some of their collaborations include IKEA, Google, SPACE10, Spotify, YouTube, Serpentine Galleries among others. Oio is the first company to officially employ an artificial intelligence as part of their team.
