From the news to the live channel
Dust 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 Valve (Counter-Strike 2 update notes and announcements), HLTV, Dust2.us and r/GlobalOffensive.
- Reddit posts from r/GlobalOffensive are community posts, not official news. When facts are looked up elsewhere for one, through web research on official and reliable pages, those pages are cited on the episode page.
- The scripts are written by an AI model (Claude, by Anthropic) from those articles.
- The voices are synthetic, made with Kokoro text-to-speech. No real person reads the lines.
- The hosts are original animated characters created for the show. They are not real players, casters or Valve characters.
- A human producer reviews and approves every episode before it airs.
- 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. Valve's own update notes and announcements, new articles from HLTV and Dust2.us, and the top posts of the day and week on r/GlobalOffensive are collected and grouped into stories, so the same announcement from three sites becomes one episode.
- Community posts are treated as leads. A Reddit post is a community post, not a source of record, and the script says so. When the facts are checked on other pages (official and reliable ones, such as Valve, HLTV or the teams and tournament organisers themselves), 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.
- A person approves it. The producer watches every episode, can correct the script and render it again, and only then publishes it. Nothing airs without that approval.
- It goes on air. A new episode plays on the live channel at dust.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 patch changes, match results, dates or prize money, check the original article.
The hosts
Rex, Priya, Bram, Kaz and Jo are original characters made for this show. They are fictional: they are not real people, not real professional players or casters, and not connected to any team, organisation or Valve. 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://dust.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: Valve's Counter-Strike 2 news, HLTV and Dust2.us, plus community posts from r/GlobalOffensive. Their articles and posts belong to their authors.
- Scripts: Claude by Anthropic.
- Voices: Kokoro-82M text-to-speech (Apache 2.0).
- Hosts and studio: original characters and animation made for Dust After Dark.
- Site art: the desert horizon, rail track and textures are original, drawn for this site.