Google's Notebook LM Can Create Podcast like Audio Conversations

Google updated the audio summarization feature of its AI note-taking and research assistant NotebookLM recently The product gained significant eyeballs for its podcast-like audio conversations based on the content users share, with the ability to guide those conversations and focus on specific topics instead of just generating holistic audio summaries.

Today, audio Overviews in NotebookLM allow users to digest and comprehend the information in lengthy documents or videos through AI-generated audio conversations. Shortly after its launch last month, the feature helped NotebookLM grab eyeballs, as many began sharing audio summaries of their content on social media, including those created using their diaries or journals.

While Google hasn’t disclosed the traction NotebookLM has received as a result, data from the website traffic analytics platform SimilarWeb suggests NotebookLM saw an over 371% increase in its traffic in September to 3.07 million monthly visits, up from 652,181 a month ago.

Until now, Audio Overviews would automatically generate AI conversations from users’ sources. But since conversations sometimes revolve around content that isn’t important, Google is introducing an update that allows you to customize the overviews based on your needs. This lets users make the audio more focused on a particular topic within their content.

A dedicated “Customize” control is available before the existing “Generate” button to let you provide instructions for the AI hosts in the audio to focus on a specific point.

Going forward we will see more players in this space with enhanced features.