True crime has become a guilty pleasure. Driving to pick up my kids, folding laundry, squeezing in a walk after work — all have become opportunities to listen to a true crime podcast. I've burned through everything from cold cases and serial killers to financial fraud and missing-person investigations.
So I decided to see if ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode could give me on-demand true crime stories. I've tried it before with less-than-perfect results, but now that ChatGPT is significantly better in 2026, I figured I'd give it another try.
For a full week, every time I reached for Spotify, I opened ChatGPT instead. I had it walk me through famous unsolved mysteries, explain competing forensic theories and even build entirely fictional cases from scratch.
By the end of the week, I wasn't ready to give up my favorite podcasts, but I also wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. Here's what happened.
The rules
For seven days, every time I wanted true crime content, I went to ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode and tested how much control different prompts gave me over the experience. Some of my favorites:
- "Tell me the story of the Zodiac Killer like you're hosting a premium true crime podcast."
- "Slow down and build suspense before revealing each clue."
- "Only tell me what investigators knew at the time, do not give any hindsight."
- "Explain the competing theories after you finish the story."
- "Create a fictional true crime mystery that's completely original but feels realistic."
What caught me off guard wasn't ChatGPT's knowledge of well-known cases. It was how it told them.
Right off the bat, my favorite part about using ChatGPT Voice as a storyteller was interrupting it to ask questions. I could even redirect the conversation mid-story if it turned out to be too scary, too slow or different from what I expected. It was the single best difference from a traditional podcast. I really enjoyed participating by asking questions or getting more details rather than just listening.
What caught me off guard wasn't ChatGPT's knowledge of well-known cases. It was how it told them.
Advanced Voice Mode varied its pacing on its own, dropping into slower, more deliberate delivery right before a key revelation. When I interrupted mid-story to ask why detectives had zeroed in on a particular suspect, or pressed for more detail on a piece of forensic evidence, it folded my question into the narrative without losing the thread.
That changed the entire dynamic. Instead of banking questions for 45 minutes until an episode ended, I could dig into whatever caught my attention the moment it came up.
The most unexpected surprise
The fictional mysteries were the real standout. The first time I tried this experiment, I didn't think to ask ChatGPT to completely come up with new stories, but it delivered.
When I asked ChatGPT to invent an original mystery, it built stories that kept me genuinely uncertain about the ending. One night I asked for a small-town disappearance set in the 1980s and got a slow-burn narrative with three viable suspects and a twist I didn't see coming.
Another time I requested a locked-room murder inspired by classic detective fiction, and it leaned into the formal, methodical tone of an Agatha Christie adaptation.
What's wild is that you can ask it to tell the story in the tone of your favorite podcast or storyteller and it will do that. And, because I wasn't tethered to historical accuracy, I could shape the story as it unfolded. It was like the Choose Your Own Adventure books I enjoyed as a kid. I could change the story as I went, even asking the AI to introduce a new suspect halfway through. Each session played out differently depending on what I threw at it. That's something no podcast can do.
Where it falls short
ChatGPT is not an investigative journalist, and it occasionally showed. It repeated information it had already covered, glossed over forensic details that deserved more depth and sometimes concluded mid-way through the story. I had to push back a few times, ask for more details and constantly had to tell it to "keep going."
When it covered real crimes, I treated the conversation as a starting point and verified key facts through reputable reporting afterward. I'd recommend doing the same. But I also noticed it steering away from graphic violence, which I actually appreciated. The tone landed closer to documentary-style storytelling than shock-value true crime, and for a daily listen, that felt more sustainable.
Final thoughts
I'm not replacing my podcasts with AI anytime soon. Despite the ability to ask questions and interrupt the story, the best true crime podcasts still deliver things ChatGPT can't match.
But it was fun to control the story. Asking for more background on characters, especially the fictional ones, often sparked my own creativity and exploring alternate theories to real cases was fun. That flexibility made it far more engaging than I anticipated, and by day three I was actively looking for excuses to start a new session.
If you like podcasts of any kind and already use Advanced Voice Mode, give it a try and share your thoughts in the comments.
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