While not particularly well known yet, Google’s NotebookLM is a fantastic tool which uses AI to help you understand a subject. You feed it some sources, and it will break the subject down and act as a study partner.
One of the most interesting elements of NotebookLM is its Audio Overviews feature, which creates a podcast featuring two AI hosts discussing the subject you’re studying. And Google is making it even better with two new features.
Google Improves NotebookLM’s Audio Overviews
As announced ina post on The Keyword, Google is making two changes to the way NotebookLM’s Audio Overviews work.
The first, and most exciting, is the option to customize the (don’t call it a podcast) podcast. Formerly, you only had the option to generate a podcast and were stuck with the results. But now, you can customize it by providing the AI with more instructions.
you may ask Gemini, the artificial intelligence model that powers NotebookLM andGoogle’s answer to ChatGPT, to focus on a specific source or specific topic, or even target a specific audience. Essentially, you’re acting as a podcast producer, guiding the presenters as you see fit.
The second new feature is the option to listen to Audio Overviews in the background. Previously, once you had clickedPlay, you could only listen to the AI podcast. But now, you’re able to play the podcast in the background while continuing to work within NotebookLM.
AI Podcasts Are a Great Way to Understand a Subject
If you haven’t yet tried NotebookLM, these two improvements to the way the Audio Overviews work are reason enough to do so. While the AI podcasts aren’t perfect, they’re surprisingly good, and almost unrecognizable from podcasts produced by humans.
NotebookLM is a very helpful note-taking tool, but the Audio Overviews ramp its usefulness up to another level. Why? Because hearing people discuss a subject in a format as familiar as a podcast makes that subject much easier to understand.
NotebookLM is available onnotebooklm.google, and anyone with a Google account can access it. The Audio Overviews feature is available once you add some sources to one of your notebooks.
