Commentary

Live AI Hosts: Google Debuts An Interactive Podcast Tool

Audio fans have a treat in store for them: a podcast called Deep Dive that brings to mind the thinking computer Hal in Stanley Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey." 

The male and female voices will discuss documents you just uploaded, and they’ll even use chatty expressions like “Man” and “Wow.” 

But they’re not real—they’re generated by AI. 

This is part of Google’s AI-powered research assistant. NotebookLM, a tool powered by Gemini 1.5 model, according to an analysis by Melissa Heikkilä in MIT Technology Review. Google introduced its Audio Overview podcasting feature in September. 

The user can upload links, videos, PDFs and text, ask questions about them and get a response. 

To test it, Heikkilä copied “every story from MIT Technology Review’s 125th-anniversary issue into NotebookLM and made the system generate a 10-minute podcast with the results. The system picked a couple of stories to focus on, and the AI hosts did a great job at conveying the general, high-level gist of what the issue was about.” 

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That’s not all the technology can do. “In less than 10 minutes, I grab all of Great Gatsby and generate a summary, study guide, Q&A bot and podcast about it,” Allie K. Miller writes on X.

The AI tool even seems to have a conscience. 

Heikkilä “pasted an excerpt from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf into NotebookLM. To my surprise, the model started generating audio based on it. Despite being programmed to be hyper-enthusiastic about topics, the AI voices expressed clear disgust and discomfort with the text, and they added a lot of context to highlight how problematic it was. What a relief.” 

Some observers might sense political bias. The AI hosts were “far more enthusiastic about Harris’s election platform,” and more skeptical about Trump, Heikkilä continues.

 “Yes, it’s cool—bordering on delightful, even—but it is also not immune from the problems that plague generative AI, such as hallucinations and bias,” Heikkilä adds.

But you may want to give it a try. In the offing are language capabilities that go beyond English. It’s time to have a chat with your friendly podcast.

 

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