Google Launches Audio Overview, an AI Feature That Creates Podcasts From Your Notes

Google announced yesterday a new experimental feature called Audio Overview to create AI-generated audio discussions with AI hosts to discuss the topics in users’s notes on NotebookLM—another experimental tool launched last summer and expanded globally this summer.

According to the new update, Audio Overview works along with NotebookLM’s newest version, Gemini 1.5 and its multimodal capacities to create engaging audio discussions based on users’ documents and information on their personal notes.

“With one click, two AI hosts start up a lively ‘deep dive’ discussion based on your sources,” explained Biao Wang, Product Manager at Google Labs, in the document, “They summarize your material, make connections between topics, and banter back and forth. You can even download the conversation and take it on the go.”

Users can also download the conversations to listen to a podcast’s audio on the go. To explain further the new feature, Google provided an 8-minute audio sample of what the tool can do, based on the new update of Audio Overview.

Two hosts, who sound like a man and a woman with very human-like voices, explain that the new AI tool can “do the reading for you and just tell you the good stuff.” The new update for NotebookLM addresses people who learn better by listening to the information instead of reading it. “It’s like having a personalized expert on whatever you are researching,” explains the female host.

Wang also noted that the new AI tool has limitations: “For example, for large notebooks, it can take several minutes to generate an Audio Overview.” The hosts also only speak English, users can’t interrupt them, and the content might include inaccurate information. Another consideration is that the “podcast” is not “objective,” as it mainly considers the sources provided by users.

To access the new feature, users have to open an existing notebook on NotebookLM, then open the Notebook guide, and click on “Generate” to create the AI podcast.

Google recently shared another AI update, an enhancement feature to “polish” emails for Google One AI Premium or Gemini Workspace add-on users.