If you have a lot of reading to do for school or work but would rather listen to a podcast, Google’s new AI-powered Audio Overview tool is just the thing for you. First demonstrated at Google I/O this year, Audio Overviews lets you turn documents, slides, and other text into an audio show where AI presenters discuss the topic. Google is touting the feature as a way for people who learn better by listening than reading to digest complex information. The feature personalizes learning for you if you prefer to listen to a topic discussed rather than read reports.
Audio Overviews is part of the NotebookLM note-taking app introduced earlier this year. The feature relies on Google’s Gemini AI models to summarize and organize documents, enhancing them with audio AI. What’s most interesting is that it’s not just an AI voice reading the same text summary — you’ll hear synthetic personalities talking about the documents with each other. Virtual hosts explain the topic and connections between different topics in the documents. They’re trying to make studying and researching easier or at least something you can enjoy while driving. The back-and-forth discussion even includes banter and jokes as if you’ve commissioned a hyper-specific podcast episode just for yourself. You can listen to an example below based on this Google blog post about NotebookLM.
Your AI podcast buddies
NotebookLM includes a generate button within the app to create an audio overview from a notebook. Once the overview is created, you can download the file and listen to it whenever you want. The audio is created using only the uploaded files; however, there is no additional research, so it is not a complete study guide. Also, as with all AI-generated content, you should be wary of hallucinations and misinformation.
At I/O, Google promised that more advanced versions of Audio Overviews are coming in the future, including the possibility of real-time interaction, not just a passive listening experience. It would turn the audio of a podcast into a radio show with a one-person audience and hosts who only want to talk about a very specific set of information. And while Google is focusing Audio Overviews on academic or other research and study, it’s very easy to imagine the same technology being used for hyper-focused (and conversational) news reporting or maybe even as a way to get all the updates on your friends and family from their social media posts.
