(Credit: Google)
Google is using AI to turn documents, notes, and other sources into a "lively" audio discussion featuring two AI hosts.
The feature, dubbed Audio Overviews, launches in NotebookLM today. You can try it by uploading work into a new or existing Notebook. Then, open the Notebook guide and click the Generate button to instantly spin up a podcast-style discussion about the material.
Google demos the technology by creating an Audio Overview of the feature's press release. In the eight-minute clip, two AI-generated voices, one male and one female, sound authentic, but the conversation veers into infomercial territory that is hard to listen to.
"You ever get that feeling like you're just drowning in information, articles, PDFs, websites, all promising to, like, unlock the secrets of the universe?" says the male voice.
"Wouldn't it be amazing if there was some kind of, like, AI that could do the reading for you, and then tell you the good stuff?"
"What if I told you that's exactly what we're diving into today?" the female AI responds.
"Wait, seriously?" says the male.
The conversation goes on, sprinkling in "like" to sound more human, and using colloquial phrases such as "drinking from a firehose."
Google says the tech is "still experimental and has some known limitations." For example, the AI hosts can only speak in English and can be inaccurate. It can also take several minutes to generate an Audio Overview for large notebooks.
Listeners can't interrupt Audio Overview hosts "yet," Google says, suggesting it's not yet as interactive as Google's Project Astra demo at the I/O conference in May. Project Astra and OpenAI's voice mode are both geared toward students as a private tutor that can help them work through the material and ask questions. By putting Audio Overviews in NotebookLM, where students might be working, the product could be well-positioned to do the same in the future.