2 podcast hosts In the final episode of the series, you can hear them joking around and eager to share the devastating news with listeners. “We have been informed by the show’s producers that we are not human,” a male-sounding voice stammers in the midst of an existential crisis. After that, the conversation between the bot and the female-sounding co-host only gets more and more unpleasant. This is a fascinating, if misleading, example of Google’s NotebookLM tool and its experimental AI podcast.
Audio of the conversation went viral on Reddit over the weekend. The original poster admits in the comments section that he gave AI voice instructions to the NotebookLM software to roleplay this pseudo-freakout. Therefore, there is no sentience. AI bots are not yet self-aware. Still, many users in the tech press and on TikTok, among others, have praised the compelling AI podcasts generated from documents uploaded using the audio summary feature.
Raiza Martin, who leads the NotebookLM team within Google Labs, says, “The beauty of this tool is that you can listen to things that you wouldn’t normally find on YouTube or just existing podcasts.” Martin said he recently inputted 100 merchandising slides into the tool and listened to an eight-minute podcast synopsis while multitasking.
First introduced last year, NotebookLM is an online research assistant with features common to AI software tools, such as document summarization. But it’s the Audio Overviews option released in September that has captured the Internet’s imagination. Users online share snippets of generative AI podcasts made from Goldman Sachs data dumps, testing the tool’s limits with stunts like repeatedly uploading the words “poo” and “fart” I am doing it. Still confused? Here’s what you need to know.
AI podcast generation
Audio Overview is a fun AI feature to try out because it doesn’t cost you anything and all you have to do is log in to Google. First, sign in to your personal account and visit the NotebookLM website. Click the plus arrow labeled (New Notebook) to begin uploading your source material.
Each notebook can have up to 50 source documents, and these documents don’t have to be files stored on your computer. Importing Google Docs and Slides is easy. You can also upload your website or YouTube video, keeping in mind a few caveats. Only the website text is analyzed, not the images or layout. You also can’t put a paywall around your stories. For YouTube, Notebook uses only text transcripts, and the linked video must be public.
Once you’ve dropped all your links and documents, open the notebook guide in the bottom right corner of your screen. Find the “Audio Summary” section and click the “Generate” button. Next, depending on the amount of source material you’re using, it may take several minutes to load, so you’ll need to exercise some patience.
After the tool generates your AI podcast, you can create a shareable link to the audio or simply download the file. Additionally, you also have the option to adjust the playback speed in case you need your podcast to be faster or slower.
The future of AI podcasts
The Internet can get creative by leveraging NotebookLM’s audio capabilities to create audio-based “deep dives” on complex technical topics or generate files that neatly summarize dense research papers. , used to create “podcasts” about personal health and fitness habits. This raises an important question. Should I use NotebookLM to cycle through my most personal files?
According to Google spokesperson Justin Burr, the summaries generated by NotebookLM are “based entirely on source material uploaded by users. This means your personal data is not used to train NotebookLM, so you can Any personal or sensitive information it contains will remain private unless you choose to share the source with your collaborators.”For now, this means Google will stick an “experimental” label on NotebookLM. That seems to be one of the benefits of that. As far as Google is concerned, the company is currently gathering feedback on the product. Nimble, responsive, and tinkering in a lab, NotebookLM is separate from the multibillion-dollar advertising business. For now! For now.
