Google's NotebookLM: Revolutionizing AI-Generated Podcasts with New Controls on the Horizon

Google NotebookLM leader says more controls coming for AI generated podcasts

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Google's NotebookLM, short for "Notebook Language Model" a stand-alone cloud-based AI workspace where users can upload documents and links and ask questions of them through a chatbot-style text interface, has recently won many plaudits among AI workers and leaders for introducing a new feature, "Audio Overviews," that allows users to create custom, AI generated podcasts with artificial host voices discussing the content uploaded by the user. The feature, like the rest of NotebookLM, is free for Google Account users. Now, based on the success and feedback to the podcast feature, NotebookLM's product leader Raiza Martin says her team will be adding new updates to allow users to control more of the Audio Overviews (AOs), including selecting different "personas" to be the AI hosts, as well as select the length of the podcast episode. "We're going to lean in here and try to accelerate more of this type of stuff in the product," she wrote in a post from her personal account on X, adding, "After that initial moment of delight, people want to influence the content. Makes sense - now you want knobs for format, length, personas, voices, languages - I'm keeping track and we're working on it (some will come much faster than others)." In her post, Martin acknowledged the excitement surrounding a recent "jailbreak" that led to some unexpected and creative outputs from the tool, including the AI hosts expressing amazement and existential dread at "discovering" they were AI characters. NotebookLM's Audio Overviews have also been used in ways that even surprised Martin. She shared a personal anecdote: "I was literally [crying emoji] when Sam said he was going to call his wife!" This highlights how NotebookLM can evoke strong emotional reactions from its users, an area the team is eager to explore further. NotebookLM has attracted attention amid a crowded, fast-paced AI landscape Reflecting on the pace of innovation in AI, Martin noted how quickly the world has adapted to AI tools like NotebookLM. She remarked that users have become more focused on asking how things are done rather than reacting with extreme emotions. This shift in attitude may indicate broader acceptance of AI-powered tools as they integrate more seamlessly into everyday workflows. As AI continues to advance, NotebookLM is one of the tools pushing the boundaries of how we interact with and process information. In a recent VentureBeat interview, Martin pointed out that corporate teams and educational users have increasingly turned to NotebookLM to streamline research and knowledge-sharing, suggesting that NotebookLM's capabilities make it ideal for enterprises as well as individual users. "We saw students using it to accelerate their learning and understanding, but professionals are doing the exact same things," Martin said. Expanding use cases for AI generated podcasts From generating podcasts to managing creative writing projects like Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, NotebookLM's use cases continue to expand. Andrej Karpathy, former head of Tesla AI and co-founder of OpenAI, praised this development on his X account, saying the product could be "touching on a whole new territory of highly compelling LLM product formats." Similarly, AI influencer and consultant Allie K. Miller also shared on X today how NotebookLM helps her summarize content and find signal in a world of noise. Martin confirmed that more formats and features are in the pipeline, ensuring that users will have even more flexibility in how they interact with the tool. As Google continues to iterate on NotebookLM, the team remains focused on listening to users and refining the tool based on their feedback. In the fast-evolving world of AI, Google's NotebookLM stands out not just for its technical prowess but also for its ability to adapt to the needs and creativity of its users.

Google's hidden AI tool turns your text into stunningly lifelike podcasts - for free. Listen for yourself

I am not at all religious, but when I discovered this tool, I wanted to scream, "This is the devil's work!" When I played the audio included below for you to my editor, she slacked back, "WHAT KIND OF SORCERY IS THIS?" I've worked with her for 10 years, during which time we have slacked back and forth just about every day, and that's the first all-caps I've ever seen from her. Also: How ChatGPT scanned 170k lines of code in seconds and saved me hours of work Later, she shared with me, "This is 100% the most terrifying thing I've seen so far in the generative AI race." If you are at all interested in artificial intelligence, what I've found could shake you up as much as it did us. We may be at a watershed moment. In this article, I'll demonstrate a service offered by Google. Please take a few minutes to listen to at least a bit of the two audio clips I'm going to share. I'll show you how they were created and how to make your own. Then we'll dive into the earthquake-level implications. Finally, please join me in the comments below to talk about this. I think we'll all need to do some processing about what this means. What you're about to hear is a podcast discussion about one of my recent articles. All I did was paste the text of my article about the too-real VR conversion of 2D images to 3D into Google's NotebookLM service and click Generate. Let me be perfectly clear: the "people" in the broadcast are not real. The audio is entirely AI-generated. To fully appreciate the implications of this technology, it's worth spending a few minutes reading my original article and then listening to at least one minute of the six-minute audio track. Next, let's take a moment to look at how this was generated. NotebookLM is kind of a cross between Google Keep and the AI in Notion. Also: How to use Google's AI-powered NotebookLM to organize your research The main data structure in NotebookLM is the notebook, which contains all your "notes" about a given project. Notes, called "sources" in NotebookLM, can be text you type into NotebookLM, similar to Keep. But they can also be PDFs, Google Docs or Slides, pasted text, audio files, YouTube links and web URLs. NotebookLM seems somewhat fussy about the format of the sources, because when I pasted the URL of my article, it couldn't read it. I had to copy the text and paste it in. I also found a PDF it couldn't read even though the PDF didn't appear locked or restricted. Once you have all your sources in a notebook, you can ask NotebookLM's AI to do AI things with the data. You can get a summary. You can ask it to extract main points. You can ask it for an outline, and so on. The AI actions use just the source data provided in a given notebook, similar to how Notion's AI works only on the data uploaded into your own Notion account. Also: In a surprise twist, Meta is suddenly crushing Apple in the innovation battle The big surprise feature, the one I'm agog about here in this article, is the Generate button, which generates the realistic banter between the two podcast hosts you heard in the demo. Right now, NotebookLM is beta and free. Let's create another astonishing podcast discussion. This time, we'll use Jason Perlow's fascinating article on the fall of Intel as our source. Also: Google's NotebookLM can discuss your notes with you now First, point your browser to NotebookLM. You'll need to be logged into your Google account. Once you're logged in, you'll see a list of notebooks. This screenshot shows just my first test, the demo I showed above, plus some sample notebooks Google provides. Clicking on New Notebook takes us to the Add Sources screen. Because I previously found it didn't process links to ZDNET articles properly, I just went down to the lower right corner and clicked on Paste Text. Then, having already cut the text from Jason's article, I pasted it into the data entry field. After a few seconds, NotebookLM opens what it calls the Notebook Guide, a summary of sources and suggestions. On the right is the Audio Overview section. Just click Generate. This takes a few minutes to generate a new podcast. Here's what we got back this time. If you want to export the file, you can click the three-dot menu and select download. The site downloads a WAV file, although you'll need to add the .WAV extension. And that's it. One quick note: about four minutes in, there's one small error. The male voice repeats a sentence. I've made the same error in webcasts and broadcasts myself, but still. First, let's take a moment to appreciate just how incredible the results are. These two recordings demonstrate a depth of understanding, the ability to write a chatty dialog that's relevant, and the ability to add new information that's culturally relevant and even sensitive. And that's all before we get to the quality of the voices and even the vocal tones. Personally, I first felt this as a gut punch. As a book author, the ability to "give good radio" is essential when doing book promotions and book tours. I've been honing my skills for more than 15 years, sweating it out with each appearance, and I'm still not as good as these two fake broadcasters. Also: Google's NotebookLM can now transform YouTube videos into study guides Yes, they were using my article (and later, Jason's) as fodder for their discussion. But output of this quality verges on making creators and content producers like me begin to feel the heat. NotebookLM had no options other than to speed up the speaking speed. Now imagine if you could choose the speakers, the styles, and maybe edit a little of the AI-generated script. Then, there's the whole question of what is real. Last week, I showed you how the Vision Pro made a 20-year-old snapshot of my long-gone kitty appear real right in front of my eyes. Now, I'm showing you how a tiny little feature in the corner of a Google notebook experiment can make up two entirely fabricated speakers that are indistinguishable from human. Also: IBM will train you in AI fundamentals for free, and give you a skill credential - in 10 hours For years, we've had the ability to distort reality in Photoshop and other editing tools. Movie makers have used special effects to create fake reality in story telling. Even the very act of taking a picture on film alters reality a bit. That picture of my cat was a 1/250th of a second snapshot of her reality, and you could only see what the camera saw, and how the developing process (that was still film) reacted to the light in the film's emulsion. So it's not that we're suddenly able to fake real. It's that we're able to extend the fake further into reality. A snapshot of a cat is different than seeing her, as if she was real, right in front of you. A computer-generated script is far different from hearing two broadcast professionals having a dynamic discussion about a topic of interest. There's also the question of cost and speed. To be clear, it cost Google billions of dollars to turn my article into a podcast. But it cost me nothing. It also took moments. That's a huge reduction in the barrier of entry to content production. Also: 6 ways to write better ChatGPT prompts - and get the results you want faster It's also worrying that some companies are choosing to use AI-generated content rather than hiring professionals like me and Jason to do it. I've been working on this article for two days, because I've been trying to find just the right way to tell this story. But when I fed the prompt "write an article about the astonishing ability of Google's NotebookLM to create an audio podcast and the implications thereof" into ChatGPT, I got a fairly well-considered article back in less than a minute. My article is clearly deeper and more complete, drawing off the nuances of my personal style, as well as my experiences and choices. But the ChatGPT-generated version isn't bad. It wrote detailed thoughts on these five themes: That's impressive for a minute's work. Google's NotebookLM got me thinking about the kinds of services this might foreshadow. I do a lot of YouTube videos, and, to be honest, I'm running behind. Could I someday have something like this Generate feature create the talking head section of a YouTube video, making it seem as if I'm giving the performance? On one hand, that might save me a ton of time and give me a chance to catch up on my backlog. But on the other hand, holy scary Batman! Do I want a simulacrum of me running around, saying gosh knows what, espousing beliefs I might disagree with or even find abhorrent? Or what if the AI itself hallucinates, ignores, or misinterprets its guardrails and spews something deeply inappropriate? It's not like it's never happened before. How many friends, constituents, and clients might see such a thing and not be able to tell it was a deepfake? How much of a mess would that be to clean up? Would it cost me a gig or a friendship, or hurt the feelings of someone I care for? I have always loved new technology. I have been fascinated by AI since I wrote one of the very earliest academic papers on the societal implications of AI, back in the days of wooden ships and iron programmers. Also: How Apple, Google, and Microsoft can save us from AI deepfakes But I'm starting to have a better understand of how the Luddites, those 19th-century textile workers who opposed the use of automation machinery, must have felt. As impressed as I am by generative AI, and as beneficial as I personally have found it, capabilities this advanced, which are merely harbingers of a vastly more advanced near future, well, they terrify me. Of course, there's the spam side of the equation. More and more, the algorithm is presenting me with narrow-focused YouTube videos on topics that interest me, only to find out after watching them that they're clearly AI-generated. Not only does the flood of these videos create unfair competition to real human creators, but they waste viewers' time. Worse, they're pushing out the real experts who might otherwise produce videos on those topics. But here's the thing. When those AI-generated videos first came out, it could sometimes be unclear whether they were real or not. But after a year or so, it's now instantly obvious what's AI garbage and what's lovingly crafted by a human. You can even tell by listening to the two sample podcasts I've provided. The first one rocked me to the core. And the second one is very, very good. But listen to one after the other and it's abundantly clear there's a pattern. We humans who have lived most or all of our lives in an intense media environment have finely tuned BS detectors. Give us a few years of this stuff, and we'll be able to see through even the best of generated AI. Also: I tested 7 AI content detectors - they're getting dramatically better at identifying plagiarism The big question is whether the folks who pay creators will care. I think they will. There's no question that Jason Perlow, for example, writes technology articles with his own deep perspective. Much of what he writes about are fields we both know a lot about. But I make sure to read his stuff, because I always learn from his unique perspective. I don't think that can be cloned by an AI, and that's why he has such a strong following of real people who value his unique voice and look forward to each new piece he produces. So, while some publishers and media aggregators will always go for the cheap solutions, they'll all start to blend together, especially as AI algorithms begin to entrain based on a common, if enormous, block of training data. But ZDNET, with uniquely experienced writers like Jason and me, and our fearless editors, will always value the uniqueness, the human-ness, and the depth of perspective that only we bring -- and that, by extension, gives ZDNET its own unique identity among other top tech sites. That's not something AI can do, and probably never will be able to. What do you think? Are you as concerned as I am? Did you find these demos impressive? Have you tried out NotebookLM yourself? Let us know in the comments below.

Listen: Google's hidden AI tool turns your text into stunningly lifelike podcasts - for free

I am not at all religious, but when I discovered this tool, I wanted to scream, "This is the devil's work!" When I played the audio included below for you to my editor, she slacked back, "WHAT KIND OF SORCERY IS THIS?" I've worked with her for 10 years, during which time we have slacked back and forth just about every day, and that's the first all-caps I've ever seen from her. Also: How ChatGPT scanned 170k lines of code in seconds and saved me hours of work Later, she shared with me, "This is 100% the most terrifying thing I've seen so far in the generative AI race." If you are at all interested in artificial intelligence, what I've found could shake you up as much as it did us. We may be at a watershed moment. In this article, I'll demonstrate a service offered by Google. Please take a few minutes to listen to at least a bit of the two audio clips I'm going to share. I'll show you how they were created and how to make your own. Then we'll dive into the earthquake-level implications. Finally, please join me in the comments below to talk about this. I think we'll all need to do some processing about what this means. What you're about to hear is a podcast discussion about one of my recent articles. All I did was paste the text of my article about the too-real VR conversion of 2D images to 3D into Google's NotebookLM service and click Generate. Let me be perfectly clear: the "people" in the broadcast are not real. The audio is entirely AI-generated. To fully appreciate the implications of this technology, it's worth spending a few minutes reading my original article and then listening to at least one minute of the six-minute audio track. Next, let's take a moment to look at how this was generated. NotebookLM is kind of a cross between Google Keep and the AI in Notion. Also: How to use Google's AI-powered NotebookLM to organize your research The main data structure in NotebookLM is the notebook, which contains all your "notes" about a given project. Notes, called "sources" in NotebookLM, can be text you type into NotebookLM, similar to Keep. But they can also be PDFs, Google Docs or Slides, pasted text, audio files, YouTube links and web URLs. NotebookLM seems somewhat fussy about the format of the sources, because when I pasted the URL of my article, it couldn't read it. I had to copy the text and paste it in. I also found a PDF it couldn't read even though the PDF didn't appear locked or restricted. Once you have all your sources in a notebook, you can ask NotebookLM's AI to do AI things with the data. You can get a summary. You can ask it to extract main points. You can ask it for an outline, and so on. The AI actions use just the source data provided in a given notebook, similar to how Notion's AI works only on the data uploaded into your own Notion account. Also: In a surprise twist, Meta is suddenly crushing Apple in the innovation battle The big surprise feature, the one I'm agog about here in this article, is the Generate button, which generates the realistic banter between the two podcast hosts you heard in the demo. Right now, NotebookLM is beta and free. Let's create another astonishing podcast discussion. This time, we'll use Jason Perlow's fascinating article on the fall of Intel as our source. Also: Google's NotebookLM can discuss your notes with you now First, point your browser to NotebookLM. You'll need to be logged into your Google account. Once you're logged in, you'll see a list of notebooks. This screenshot shows just my first test, the demo I showed above, plus some sample notebooks Google provides. Clicking on New Notebook takes us to the Add Sources screen. Because I previously found it didn't process links to ZDNET articles properly, I just went down to the lower right corner and clicked on Paste Text. Then, having already cut the text from Jason's article, I pasted it into the data entry field. After a few seconds, NotebookLM opens what it calls the Notebook Guide, a summary of sources and suggestions. On the right is the Audio Overview section. Just click Generate. This takes a few minutes to generate a new podcast. Here's what we got back this time. If you want to export the file, you can click the three-dot menu and select download. The site downloads a WAV file, although you'll need to add the .WAV extension. And that's it. One quick note: about four minutes in, there's one small error. The male voice repeats a sentence. I've made the same error in webcasts and broadcasts myself, but still. First, let's take a moment to appreciate just how incredible the results are. These two recordings demonstrate a depth of understanding, the ability to write a chatty dialog that's relevant, and the ability to add new information that's culturally relevant and even sensitive. And that's all before we get to the quality of the voices and even the vocal tones. Personally, I first felt this as a gut punch. As a book author, the ability to "give good radio" is essential when doing book promotions and book tours. I've been honing my skills for more than 15 years, sweating it out with each appearance, and I'm still not as good as these two fake broadcasters. Also: Google's NotebookLM can now transform YouTube videos into study guides Yes, they were using my article (and later, Jason's) as fodder for their discussion. But output of this quality verges on making creators and content producers like me begin to feel the heat. NotebookLM had no options other than to speed up the speaking speed. Now imagine if you could choose the speakers, the styles, and maybe edit a little of the AI-generated script. Then, there's the whole question of what is real. Last week, I showed you how the Vision Pro made a 20-year-old snapshot of my long-gone kitty appear real right in front of my eyes. Now, I'm showing you how a tiny little feature in the corner of a Google notebook experiment can make up two entirely fabricated speakers that are indistinguishable from human. Also: IBM will train you in AI fundamentals for free, and give you a skill credential - in 10 hours For years, we've had the ability to distort reality in Photoshop and other editing tools. Movie makers have used special effects to create fake reality in story telling. Even the very act of taking a picture on film alters reality a bit. That picture of my cat was a 1/250th of a second snapshot of her reality, and you could only see what the camera saw, and how the developing process (that was still film) reacted to the light in the film's emulsion. So it's not that we're suddenly able to fake real. It's that we're able to extend the fake further into reality. A snapshot of a cat is different than seeing her, as if she was real, right in front of you. A computer-generated script is far different from hearing two broadcast professionals having a dynamic discussion about a topic of interest. There's also the question of cost and speed. To be clear, it cost Google billions of dollars to turn my article into a podcast. But it cost me nothing. It also took moments. That's a huge reduction in the barrier of entry to content production. Also: 6 ways to write better ChatGPT prompts - and get the results you want faster It's also worrying that some companies are choosing to use AI-generated content rather than hiring professionals like me and Jason to do it. I've been working on this article for two days, because I've been trying to find just the right way to tell this story. But when I fed the prompt "write an article about the astonishing ability of Google's NotebookLM to create an audio podcast and the implications thereof" into ChatGPT, I got a fairly well-considered article back in less than a minute. My article is clearly deeper and more complete, drawing off the nuances of my personal style, as well as my experiences and choices. But the ChatGPT-generated version isn't bad. It wrote detailed thoughts on these five themes: That's impressive for a minute's work. Google's NotebookLM got me thinking about the kinds of services this might foreshadow. I do a lot of YouTube videos, and, to be honest, I'm running behind. Could I someday have something like this Generate feature create the talking head section of a YouTube video, making it seem as if I'm giving the performance? On one hand, that might save me a ton of time and give me a chance to catch up on my backlog. But on the other hand, holy scary Batman! Do I want a simulacrum of me running around, saying gosh knows what, espousing beliefs I might disagree with or even find abhorrent? Or what if the AI itself hallucinates, ignores, or misinterprets its guardrails and spews something deeply inappropriate? It's not like it's never happened before. How many friends, constituents, and clients might see such a thing and not be able to tell it was a deepfake? How much of a mess would that be to clean up? Would it cost me a gig or a friendship, or hurt the feelings of someone I care for? I have always loved new technology. I have been fascinated by AI since I wrote one of the very earliest academic papers on the societal implications of AI, back in the days of wooden ships and iron programmers. Also: How Apple, Google, and Microsoft can save us from AI deepfakes But I'm starting to have a better understand of how the Luddites, those 19th-century textile workers who opposed the use of automation machinery, must have felt. As impressed as I am by generative AI, and as beneficial as I personally have found it, capabilities this advanced, which are merely harbingers of a vastly more advanced near future, well, they terrify me. Of course, there's the spam side of the equation. More and more, the algorithm is presenting me with narrow-focused YouTube videos on topics that interest me, only to find out after watching them that they're clearly AI-generated. Not only does the flood of these videos create unfair competition to real human creators, but they waste viewers' time. Worse, they're pushing out the real experts who might otherwise produce videos on those topics. But here's the thing. When those AI-generated videos first came out, it could sometimes be unclear whether they were real or not. But after a year or so, it's now instantly obvious what's AI garbage and what's lovingly crafted by a human. You can even tell by listening to the two sample podcasts I've provided. The first one rocked me to the core. And the second one is very, very good. But listen to one after the other and it's abundantly clear there's a pattern. We humans who have lived most or all of our lives in an intense media environment have finely tuned BS detectors. Give us a few years of this stuff, and we'll be able to see through even the best of generated AI. Also: I tested 7 AI content detectors - they're getting dramatically better at identifying plagiarism The big question is whether the folks who pay creators will care. I think they will. There's no question that Jason Perlow, for example, writes technology articles with his own deep perspective. Much of what he writes about are fields we both know a lot about. But I make sure to read his stuff, because I always learn from his unique perspective. I don't think that can be cloned by an AI, and that's why he has such a strong following of real people who value his unique voice and look forward to each new piece he produces. So, while some publishers and media aggregators will always go for the cheap solutions, they'll all start to blend together, especially as AI algorithms begin to entrain based on a common, if enormous, block of training data. But ZDNET, with uniquely experienced writers like Jason and me, and our fearless editors, will always value the uniqueness, the human-ness, and the depth of perspective that only we bring -- and that, by extension, gives ZDNET its own unique identity among other top tech sites. That's not something AI can do, and probably never will be able to. What do you think? Are you as concerned as I am? Did you find these demos impressive? Have you tried out NotebookLM yourself? Let us know in the comments below.

This open-source AI tool was built in a day and it's coming for Google's NotebookLM

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Gabriel Chua, a data scientist at Singapore's GovTech agency, has created an open-source competitor to Google's increasingly popular NotebookLM. Dubbed "Open NotebookLM," Chua developed the entire system in just one afternoon using publicly available AI models. Open NotebookLM transforms PDF documents into personalized podcasts, mirroring a key feature of Google's product but with a crucial distinction: it's entirely open-source and free to use. The tool employs Meta's Llama 3.1 405B language model, hosted on Fireworks AI, alongside MeloTTS for voice synthesis. A user-friendly interface, built with Gradio and hosted on Hugging Face Spaces, makes the tool accessible to non-technical users. AI development in hours: The rise of quick replication The speed at which Chua developed and released Open NotebookLM highlights the increasing capabilities of open-source AI tools. It demonstrates that individual developers or small teams can now replicate and adapt complex AI applications, once the exclusive domain of tech giants, in a matter of hours. However, the rapid development of Open NotebookLM also raises questions about the quality and reliability of quickly assembled AI tools. While impressive in its scope, the open-source alternative may lack the rigorous testing and refinement that typically accompany commercial products. Users should approach such tools with caution, particularly when handling sensitive or confidential documents. Google's edge: Why NotebookLM still holds the upper hand Google's NotebookLM still maintains several advantages over its open-source counterpart. It offers seamless integration with Google's ecosystem, including support for Google Slides and web URLs. The tech giant's vast computational resources and proprietary AI models also enable advanced features like fact-checking and study guide generation, which are currently beyond Open NotebookLM's capabilities. The emergence of Open NotebookLM represents a significant shift in the AI landscape. It exemplifies how the barrier to entry for creating sophisticated AI applications is lowering, allowing for more diverse and innovative solutions to emerge. This trend could lead to increased competition and potentially faster advancements in AI technology. The double-edged sword: Opportunities and risks in open-source AI The proliferation of easily created AI tools also presents challenges. As more developers gain the ability to create powerful AI applications, concerns about data privacy, security, and the ethical use of AI become more pressing. The open-source nature of tools like Open NotebookLM allows for community scrutiny and improvement, but it also means that malicious actors could potentially adapt the technology for harmful purposes. For enterprise users and decision-makers, the rise of open-source AI tools like Open NotebookLM presents both opportunities and risks. On one hand, these tools offer cost-effective alternatives to proprietary solutions and the flexibility to customize applications to specific needs. On the other hand, they may lack the support, security guarantees, and ongoing development that come with commercial products. As the lines between proprietary and open-source AI continue to blur, we may be entering a new phase in software development. The power to create sophisticated AI applications is spreading beyond large tech companies, potentially fostering a more diverse AI ecosystem. However, this shift also underscores the need for robust frameworks to ensure the responsible development and use of AI technologies. Chua and the open-source community are capitalizing on their ability to rapidly replicate and iterate on proprietary AI technologies. As this trend continues, it may prompt tech giants to reconsider their approach to AI development, potentially leading to more collaboration between proprietary and open-source efforts in the future.

I tried Google's new one-click AI podcast creator, and now I don't know what's real anymore

I've had a glimpse of how AI will change the world, and it's filling me with both fear and wonder in equal measure. The source of my consternation is Google NotebookLM. NotebookLM takes an article, blog post, or web page, and with just one click produces an audio file of a conversation between two people about it that sounds so natural and realistic that there is no way you'd believe you weren't listening to two real people talking. They talk with passion and authority about the subject, sound engaged and interested and riff off one another in such a natural way that it takes your breath away. There are even the little sniffs, slight mispronunciations, slurs, and little giggles that all make it sound completely human. Here's what happened. In my spare time I write a blog about Tai Chi called the Tai Chi Notebook. So, having heard about NotebookLM (the 'notebook' in the name is just a coincidence) I thought I'd throw one of my Tai Chi articles at it, just to see what it did. Creating the audio is easy. It took it a few minutes to think about it, but it very quickly generated a .WAV file that I could download to my desktop. The audio clip lasted around eight minutes and after I'd listened to it, the world simply wasn't the same anymore; I no longer had confidence that I could tell what was real and what wasn't. The AI had taken my article and explained the key concepts via the 'presenters' having a conversation. It had even expanded on it in new and interesting directions that I hadn't thought of, drawing analogies about what I was saying to other areas of life. The presenters had even introduced practical examples of what I was talking about, and these examples weren't taken from my article but from their wider knowledge of the subject. And, most importantly, it didn't get any of it wrong. See what you think: Obviously, we're just at the start of the new AI-age at the moment, with key players such as ChatGPT, Gemini and more recently Apple Intelligence only just getting started. NotebookLM doesn't have that many options right now - you can speed up or slow down playback and that's about it - but it won't be long before it lets you choose the type of presenter you want, their accent, their expertise, their political leaning, their personality and, once we move into AI-generated video as standard, how they look. As I wrote recently, AI is already being used in films, and we can imagine a world where a movie is generated on the fly, with the plot changing to suit your whims. Yes, this will sound terrifying to some, but movies are already flights of fancy that exist in the world of the imagination. It's when AI intrudes on the real world that I get most concerned. I've got a friend whose daughter is applying for university right now, and he tells me that many institutions are saying they don't require a personal statement anymore because so many are doctored using AI that there's little point to them. All of which brings me back to NotebookLM. It can already produce a fantastic podcast out of one of my articles at the click of a button, and it feels like we're on the dawn of a very big change in the way media is produced. I'm not sure I know what's real anymore, and that's something I'm just going to have to get used to.

Fake AI "podcasters" are reviewing my book and it's freaking me out

NotebookLM's "Audio Summaries" show a more personable future for AI-generated content. Further ReadingAs someone who has been following the growth of generative AI for a while now, I know that the technology can be pretty good (if not quite human-level) at quickly summarizing complex documents into a more digestible form. But I still wasn't prepared for how disarmingly compelling it would be to listen to Google's NotebookLM condense my recent book about Minesweeper into a tight, 12.5-minute, podcast-style conversation between two people that don't exist. There are still enough notable issues with NotebookLM's audio output to prevent it from fully replacing professional podcasters any time soon. Even so, the podcast-like format is an incredibly engaging and endearing way to take in complex information and points to a much more personable future for generative AI than the dry back-and-forth of a text-based chatbot. Hey! Listen! Listen to NotebookLM's 12.5-minute summary of my Minesweeper book using the player above. Google's NotebookLM launched over a year ago as "a virtual research assistant that can summarize facts, explain complex ideas, and brainstorm new connections -- all based on the sources you select." Just last week, though, Google added the new "Audio Overview" feature that it's selling as "a new way to turn your documents into engaging audio discussions." Google doesn't use the word "podcast" anywhere in that announcement, instead talking up audio creations that "summarize your material, make connections between topics, and banter back and forth." But Wharton AI professor Ethan Mollick correctly refered to the style as a "podcast" in a recent social media post sharing a NotebookLM Audio Overview of his book. Mollick called these Audio Summaries "the current best 'wow this is amazing & useful' demo of AI" and "unnerving, too", and we have to agree on both counts. Inspired by Mollick's post, I decided to feed my own book into NotebookLM to see what its virtual "podcasters" would make of 30,000 or so words about '90s Windows gaming classic Minesweeper (believe it or not, I could have written much more). Just a few minutes later, I was experiencing a reasonable facsimile of what it would be like if I was featured on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour or a similar banter-filled podcast. Just the facts? NotebookLM's summary hits on all the book's major sections: the pre-history of the games that inspired Minesweeper; the uphill battle for the Windows Entertainment Pack at a business-focused Microsoft of the '90s; the moral panic over the game's pre-installation on millions of business and government computers; and the surprising cheating controversies that surrounded the game's competitive scene. Sure, I could quibble about which specific bits the summary decided to focus on and/or leave out (maybe feeding different chapters individually would have led to more detail in the collected summaries). But anyone listening to this "podcast" would get the same general overview of my book that they would listening to one of the many actual podcasts that I did after the book launched. While there weren't any full-blown, whole cloth hallucinations in NotebookLM's summary "podcast," there were a few points where it got small details wrong or made assumptions that weren't supported in the text. Discussing Minesweeper predecessor Mined-Out, for instance, NotebookLM's audio summary says, "So this is where those squares and flags start to come into play..." even though Mined-Out had neither feature. Then there's the portion where the summary-cast mentions a senator that called Minesweeper "a menace to the republic," repeating the quote for emphasis. That definitely captures the spirit of Senator Lauch Faircloth's tirade against Minesweeper and other games being pre-installed on government computers. In the "podcast" context, though, it sounds like the voices are putting words in Faircloth's mouth by sharing a direct quote. Small, overzealous errors like these -- and a few key bits of the book left out of the podcast entirely -- would give me pause if I were trying to use a NotebookLM summary as the basis for a scholarly article or piece of journalism. But I could see using a summary like this to get some quick Cliff's Notes-style grounding on a thick tome I didn't have the time or inclination to read fully. And, unlike poring through Cliff's Notes, the pithy, podcast-style format would actually make for enjoyable background noise while out on a walk or running errands.