While Google continues to push its Gemini assistant to the forefront regarding its public-facing AI efforts, there are plenty of other AI projects the company is cooking up that don't receive the same attention.
NotebookLM is a prime example of one of Google's impressive free-to-use hidden gems for AI tools — designed to expand, summarize, and organize your writing while generating ideas for how to construct your next project.
It can transform a few loose notes into a fleshed-out document, giving you a great foundation for your next YouTube script, school assignment, or even briefings for your next business meeting.
The tool has been around since July 2023 and has been steadily improving ever since. NotebookLM is now running on Gemini 1.5 Pro and is capable of generating charts and diagrams in its results, as well as fact-checking itself by providing sources that accompany its points.
However, one of the latest features of Google's AI writing aid is its audio overview option, which can produce stunningly rich audio conversations from a list of your selected sources. It's so good, it's hard to believe how easy and fast it is to generate. And if you have your doubts, let's highlight an example Laptop Mag has generated to showcase the feature further.
NotebookLM: What can it do?
The above near-ten-minute audio exchange riffs on our recently published Meta Quest 3 vs. Meta Quest 3S face-off article, with both hosts playing off of one another's points as they reveal what we can expect from Meta's latest AR/VR headset when it's unveiled at tomorrows Meta Connect 2024 keynote.
However, the hosts in question aren't Laptop Mag writers or editors, nor are they interested third-parties covering the news and using our article as a source. In fact, the hosts of this particular micro-podcast aren't even real people, just AI-generated voices following a dynamic AI script to best deliver the contents of the supplied article in audio form.
Despite their emotive engagement with the subject, their effortless back-and-forths, and engaging, well-researched discussion, this ten minutes of audio was generated in five minutes using nothing but the copied contents of the original article.
Once generated, NotebookLM allows you to download the sample, where you can then upload it to your platform of choice to share with others or take into an editing program to spruce things up as you see fit.
The results are pretty remarkable, with only a few audio glitches or pronunciation issues throughout the entirety of our ten-minute sample. How the hosts interact and engage with one another is perhaps the most impressive element of NotebookLM's audio overview feature, delivering very convincing (almost too convincing at times) and compelling points and arguments that feel natural and thought through.
With a feature like this, NotebookLM could be a fantastic companion to those needing to research long-form writings, those looking to compact detailed articles into bite-size forms on the go, or even podcasters who are looking for a more solid structure for how their segments should be laid out.
It's the white-noise savior of students who soak up information by proxy and a great way to pick out the more interesting and key points from any piece of writing to be delivered in an engaging way.
NotebookLM: Try it yourself
Perhaps one of the most compelling things about Google's NotebookLM is that it's absolutely free and incredibly simple to use. If you want to give the company's writing aid a try for yourself, you can do so just by visiting the NotebookLM homepage at https://notebooklm.google and clicking "Try NotebookLM" before signing in with your Google Account.
From here you can create a new notebook, which starts with you adding sources. You can add up to 50 sources, with the more sources used typically resulting in a longer audio overview at the end of the process. You can pull sources from various places, including Google Docs, Google Sheets, webpages, and even copied text from the clipboard.
With your sources compiled, you can instantly generate an audio overview that will discuss the topic at hand using your supplied sources, or you can continue refining what you'd like help to do using the Gemini chat window at the base of the page or the shortcut suggestions at the top of the page.
When you're ready, click "Generate" in the audio overview section of the Notebook guide and NotebookLM will create the two-host conversation. All you have to do is wait and then be amazed by the eventual outcome.
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