Did Google Just Kill Podcasts?
No, but the new audio overview feature of NotebookLM is pretty wild and will have ramifications for the podcast industry
AI advances like ChatGPT felt like they skipped a decade of public iterations and sprung forth without any expectation of their arrival. They have elicited in me a strange mix of surprise, delight, fear, and nervous laughter as I look around and say “what the hell.”
That’s how I felt the other week when I heard about and then tested the new “audio description” feature that is freely available in Google’s NotebookLM. You can create a short “deep dive” podcast at the touch of a button that is based on documents you upload (or even a single document). It features two AI co-hosts who discuss, summarize, and contextualize the information in a natural, chatty back and forth.
Before we get into the implications, let’s talk about what this tool actually is and where to find it.
What exactly is NotebookLM and this “deep dive” podcast?
Even as someone interested in keeping up with AI news, the existence of NotebookLM had gone under the radar for me. This is how Google explained NotebookLM when it released to the public July of 2023:
