Two podcasts hosts banter forwards and backwards throughout the remaining episode of their sequence, audibly anxious to share some distressing information with listeners. “We have been, uh, knowledgeable by the present’s producers that we’re not human,” a male-sounding voice stammers out, mid-existential disaster. The dialog between the bot and his female-sounding cohost solely will get extra uncomfortable after that—an enticing, albeit deceptive, instance of Google’s NotebookLM instrument, and its experimental AI podcasts.
Audio of the dialog went viral on Reddit over the weekend. The unique poster admits within the feedback part that they fed the NotebookLM software program instructions for the AI voices to roleplay this pseudo-freakout. So, no sentience; the AI bots haven’t turn into self-aware. Nonetheless, many customers within the tech press, on TikTok, and elsewhere are praising the convincing AI podcasts, generated by means of uploaded paperwork with the Audio Overviews characteristic.
“The magic of the instrument is that folks get to take heed to one thing that they ordinarily wouldn’t have the ability to simply discover on YouTube or an present podcast,” says Raiza Martin, who leads the NotebookLM group inside Google Labs. Martin mentions lately inputting a 100-slide deck on commercialization into the instrument and listening to the 8-minute podcast abstract as she multitasked.
First launched final 12 months, NotebookLM is a web based analysis assistant with options widespread for AI software program instruments, like doc summarization. Nevertheless it’s the Audio Overviews choice, launched in September, that’s capturing the Web’s creativeness. Customers on-line are sharing snippets of their generative AI podcasts made from Goldman Sachs data dumps, and testing the instrument’s limitations through stunts, like simply repeatedly importing the phrases “poop” and “fart.” Nonetheless confused? Right here’s what you have to know.
Producing That AI Podcast
Audio Overviews are a enjoyable AI characteristic to check out, as a result of they do not value the person something—all you want is a Google login. Begin by signing into your private account and visiting the NotebookLM website. Click on on the plus arrow that reads New Pocket book to begin importing your supply materials.
Every Pocket book can work with as much as 50 supply paperwork, and these don’t should be recordsdata saved to your laptop. Google Docs and Slides are easy to import. You too can add web sites and YouTube movies, conserving some caveats in thoughts. Solely the textual content from web sites can be analyzed, not the pictures or structure, and the story can’t be paywalled. For YouTube, Pocket book will simply use the textual content transcript and the linked movies have to be public.
After you’ve dropped in your whole hyperlinks and paperwork, you’ll wish to open up the Pocket book information out there within the backside proper nook of the display screen. Discover the Audio Overview part and click on the Generate button. Subsequent, you’ll must train some persistence, as a result of it could take a couple of minutes to load, relying on how a lot supply materials you’re utilizing.
After the instrument generates the AI podcast, you’ll be able to create a sharable hyperlink to the audio or just obtain the file. Moreover, you will have the choice to regulate its playback velocity, in case you want the podcast to be faster or extra slowed down.
The Way forward for AI Podcasts
The web has gotten artistic with NotebookLM’s audio characteristic, utilizing it to create audio-based “deep dives” into complicated technical subjects, generate recordsdata that neatly summarize dense analysis papers, and produce “podcasts” about their private well being and health routines. Which poses an necessary query: Ought to you utilize NotebookLM to crank by means of your most private recordsdata?
The summaries generated from NotebookLM are, in keeping with Google spokesperson Justin Burr, “fully grounded within the supply materials {that a} person uploads. That means, your private information shouldn’t be used to coach NotebookLM, so any non-public or delicate info you will have in your sources will keep non-public, until you select to share your sources with collaborators.” For now this appears to be one of many upsides of Google slapping an “experimental” label on NotebookLM; to listen to Google’s framing of it, the corporate is simply gathering suggestions on the product proper now, being agile and responsive, tinkering away in a lab, and NotebookLM is indifferent from its multi-billion greenback advert enterprise. For now! For now.
