Google’s AI Podcast Tool Is Dazzling. But Is It Useful?
A new feature rivals ChatGPT for viral excitement, but making it valuable for businesses and consumers is another matter.
Can Google’s AI-driven artificial podcasts outdo Joe Rogan?
Photographer: MANDEL NGAN/AFPGoogle is having its very own ChatGPT moment.
Technologists, scientists and OpenAI founder Sam Altman have been praising a feature added in September by NotebookLM, a free online research tool that Alphabet Inc.’s core business released last year. Uploading documents to the site allows users to answer questions about their content or synthesize it into summaries, briefing notes and more. Now it can also turn that content into an eerily human-sounding podcast. The male and female AI-generated hosts not only have sonorous, FM-radio voices but punctuate their conversations with “ums,” pauses and catchy phrases like “get this.” The banter sounds so seamless that you’d be forgiven for thinking the conversation was between people.