Although it’s not very well known yet, Google’s NotebookLM is a great tool that uses AI to help you understand a topic. You give it some sources, and it will act as a study partner by breaking down the topic.
One of the most interesting elements of NotebookLM is its Audio Overview feature, which creates a podcast of two AI hosts discussing the topic you’re studying. And Google is making it even better with two new features.
Google Improves NotebookLM’s Audio Overview
As announced in a post on The Keyword, Google is making two changes to the way NotebookLM’s Audio Overview works.
The first, and most exciting, is the option to customize the podcast (don’t call it a podcast). Previously, you only had the option to create a podcast and you’d be stuck with the results. But now, you can customize it by providing the AI with more instructions.
You can ask Gemini, the artificial intelligence model that powers NotebookLM and Google’s ChatGPT, to focus on a specific source or a specific topic, or even target a specific audience. Essentially, you’re acting as a podcast producer, guiding presenters as you please.
The second new feature is the option to listen to audio overviews in the background. Previously, you could only listen to AI podcasts when you clicked play. But now, you can play podcasts in the background while working in NotebookLM.
AI podcasts are a great way to understand a topic
If you haven’t tried NotebookLM yet, these two improvements to the way audio overviews work are reason enough to do so. Although AI podcasts aren’t perfect, they’re surprisingly good, and almost unrecognizable from podcasts produced by humans.
NotebookLM is a very useful note-taking tool, but audio overviews elevate its usefulness to another level. Why? Because hearing people discuss a topic in a familiar format like a podcast makes it much easier to understand that topic.
NotebookLM is available at notebooklm.google, and anyone with a Google account can access it. The audio overview feature is available when you add certain sources to one of your notebooks.