“All right, so today we are going to dive deep into some cutting-edge tech,” a chatty American male voice says.
But this voice does not belong to a human. It belongs to
Google’s new AI podcasting tool, called #Audio #Overview, which has become a surprise viral hit.
The podcasting feature was launched in mid-September as part of NotebookLM, a year-old AI-powered research assistant.
NotebookLM, which is powered by Google’s Gemini 1.5 model, allows people to upload content such as links, videos, PDFs, and text. They can then ask the system questions about the content, and it offers short summaries.
The tool generates a podcast called #Deep #Dive, which features a male and a female voice discussing whatever you uploaded.
The voices are breathtakingly realistic
—the episodes are laced with little "human-sounding" phrases like “Man” and “Wow” and “Oh right” and “Hold on, let me get this right.” The “hosts” even interrupt each other.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/03/1104978/people-are-using-google-study-software-to-make-ai-podcasts-and-theyre-weird-and-amazing/