I've had a vision of how AI will change the world, and it fills me with 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 a single click, produces an audio file of a conversation between two people about the topic that sounds so natural and realistic that there’s no way you’d believe you weren’t listening to two real people talking. They speak with passion and authority about the topic, they sound engaged and interested, and they listen to each other in such a natural way that it takes your breath away. There are even little snorts, slight mispronunciations, babbles, and tiny giggles that make it sound completely human.
Here's what happened. In my spare time I write a blog about Tai Chi called Tai Chi Notebook. So, after hearing about NotebookLM (the “notebook” in the name is just a coincidence), I thought I'd post one of my articles about Tai Chi, just to see what would happen.
Creating the audio is easy. It took me a few minutes to think about it, but it quickly generated a .WAV file that I was able to download to my desktop. The audio clip was around eight minutes long, and after listening to it, the world just wasn't the same anymore; I no longer had confidence in being able to tell what was real from what wasn't.
The AI had taken my article and explained the key concepts through a conversation between the “presenters.” It had even expanded on it in new and interesting directions that I hadn’t thought of, drawing analogies between what I was saying and other areas of life. The presenters had even presented practical examples of what I was saying, and these examples weren’t taken from my article, but from their broader knowledge of the subject. And, most importantly, it didn’t get anything wrong.
See what you think:
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The dawn of the AI era
Obviously, we’re only at the beginning of the new AI era, with key players like ChatGPT, Gemini, and most recently Apple Intelligence just getting started. NotebookLM doesn’t have a lot of 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 experience, their political leaning, their personality, and — once we move to AI-generated videos as the standard — their appearance. As I wrote recently, AI is already being used in movies, and we can imagine a world where a movie is generated on the fly, with the plot changing to suit your whims.
Yes, this may sound scary to some, but movies are already fantasies that exist in the world of imagination. When AI intrudes into the real world, that's when I worry the most. I have a friend whose daughter is applying to college right now, and she tells me that many institutions are saying they no longer require a personal statement because many are manipulated by AI and don't make much sense.
All of this brings me back to NotebookLM. It can already produce a fantastic podcast from one of my articles at the push of a button, and it feels like we're at the dawn of a huge shift in the way media is produced. I'm not sure I know what's real anymore, and that's something I'll just have to get used to.
