Audio Overview, a new AI podcasting tool by Google, can generate realistic podcasts with human-like voices using content uploaded by users through NotebookLM. MIT Technology Review reports: NotebookLM, which is powered by Google’s Gemini 1.5 model, allows people to upload content such as links, videos, PDFs, and text. They can then ask the system questions about the content, and it offers short summaries. The tool generates a podcast called Deep Dive, which features a male and a female voice discussing whatever you uploaded. The voices are breathtakingly realistic — the episodes are laced with little human-sounding phrases like “Man” and “Wow” and “Oh right” and “Hold on, let me get this right.” The “hosts” even interrupt each other.
The AI system is designed to create “magic in exchange for a little bit of content,” Raiza Martin, the product lead for NotebookLM, said on X. The voice model is meant to create emotive and engaging audio, which is conveyed in an “upbeat hyper-interested tone,” Martin said. NotebookLM, which was originally marketed as a study tool, has taken a life of its own among users. The company is now working on adding more customization options, such as changing the length, format, voices, and languages, Martin said. Currently it’s supposed to generate podcasts only in English, but some users on Reddit managed to get the tool to create audio in French and Hungarian. Here are some examples highlighted by MIT Technology Review: Allie K. Miller, a startup AI advisor, used the tool to create a study guide and summary podcast of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
Machine-learning researcher Aaditya Ura fed NotebookLM with the code base of Meta’s Llama-3 architecture. He then used another AI tool to find images that matched the transcript to create an educational video.
Alex Volkov, a human AI podcaster, used NotebookLM to create a Deep Dive episode summarizing of the announcements from OpenAI’s global developer conference Dev Day.
In one viral clip, someone managed to send the two voices into an existential spiral when they “realized” they were, in fact, not humans but AI systems. The video is hilarious.
The tool is also good for some laughs. Exhibit A: Someone just fed it the words “poop” and “fart” as source material, and got over nine minutes of two AI voices analyzing what this might mean.