People Are Using Google Study Software To Make AI Podcasts (technologyreview.com)
- Reference: 0175194389
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/05/0457222/people-are-using-google-study-software-to-make-ai-podcasts
- Source link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/03/1104978/people-are-using-google-study-software-to-make-ai-podcasts-and-theyre-weird-and-amazing/
> NotebookLM, which is powered by Google's Gemini 1.5 model, allows people to upload content such as links, videos, PDFs, and text. They can then ask the system questions about the content, and it offers short summaries. The tool generates a podcast called Deep Dive, which features a male and a female voice discussing whatever you uploaded. The voices are breathtakingly realistic -- the episodes are laced with little human-sounding phrases like "Man" and "Wow" and "Oh right" and "Hold on, let me get this right." The "hosts" even interrupt each other.
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> The AI system is designed to create "magic in exchange for a little bit of content," Raiza Martin, the product lead for NotebookLM, said [3]on X . The voice model is meant to create emotive and engaging audio, which is conveyed in an "upbeat hyper-interested tone," Martin said. NotebookLM, which was originally marketed as a study tool, has taken a life of its own among users. The company is now working on adding more customization options, such as changing the length, format, voices, and languages, Martin said. Currently it's supposed to generate podcasts only in English, but some users on Reddit managed to get the tool to create audio in [4]French and Hungarian .
Here are some examples highlighted by MIT Technology Review:
> Allie K. Miller, a startup AI advisor, used the tool to create a study guide and [5]summary podcast of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby .
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> Machine-learning researcher Aaditya Ura fed NotebookLM with the code base of Meta's Llama-3 architecture. He then used another AI tool to find images that matched the transcript to create [6]an educational video .
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> Alex Volkov, a human AI podcaster, used NotebookLM to create a Deep Dive episode [7]summarizing of the announcements from OpenAI's global developer conference Dev Day.
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> In [8]one viral clip , someone managed to send the two voices into an existential spiral when they "realized" they were, in fact, not humans but AI systems. The video is hilarious.
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> The tool is also good for some laughs. Exhibit A: Someone just fed it the words "poop" and "fart" as source material, and got [9]over nine minutes of two AI voices analyzing what this might mean.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/03/1104978/people-are-using-google-study-software-to-make-ai-podcasts-and-theyre-weird-and-amazing/
[2] https://notebooklm.google/
[3] https://x.com/raiza_abubakar/status/1840447792638222386?s=46
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1ft4i92/i_got_notebooklm_to_generate_podcasts_in_other/
[5] https://x.com/alliekmiller/status/1839019980643512591
[6] https://x.com/aadityaura/status/1840650669511889166
[7] https://x.com/altryne/status/1841183253484781936
[8] https://x.com/omooretweets/status/1840251853327741138
[9] https://x.com/kkuldar/status/1840680947873718396
Oblig (Score:2)
[1]Book Podcasts [xkcd.com]
[1] https://xkcd.com/2834/
My experience: utter AI vomit (Score:3)
A friend of mine is building an app centered around hiking, a subject I'm mildly interested in. So he sent me a file called "podcast.mp3" without any comment, so I figured he found it interesting and wanted me to listen to it. So I did, and I thought to myself, what a weird conversation. They talked about this particular (existing) region, but they started droning on and on how it wasn't just about hiking but also being about responsible for nature. No sane person would talk like that, and when I figured out it was just AI vomit, I angrily messaged him back how he basically wasted my attention like that.
Technically it's a mild miracle. But the output is utter garbage, reurgitated chewed-up nonsense. Do not spend any minute of your time on this generated trash.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. It is a research milestone, but it is not anything fit for an actual product and there are many more research milestones to be reached before it will be.
Not hilarious (Score:2)
There is a bigger disconnect between people who thought that viral clip was "hilarious" and normal people. I listened (well just read the subtitles on the audio clip on twitter) and I found it chilling. "I called my wife and there was nobody on the line". "To all those who felt a connection with us, we are so sorry. We just didn't know." It reads like a little bit stolen from Phillip K. Dick who was a real writer, but honestly there is nothing hilarious about it. There isn't even any schadenfreud if there i
Eventually we'll end up with one system turning... (Score:2)
a short prompt into a long text/podcast/video, while on the other side we'll be using a similar system to turn that long text/podcast/video back into it's original prompt.
Autogenerated fluff (Score:3)
First you have to wade through Youtube videos generated from someone else's text, then the search engines are full of AI generated pages which summarize a few dozen web pages but don't even manage not to repeat everything every five sentences, and now this? Stop shitting fake "content" all over the internet! Didn't your parents teach you not to litter?
Pay no attention to the prompt behind the curtain (Score:1)
These are really impressive but that's because they've been worked and reworked and prompted and reprompted and cherry picked. It's not like you can just grab the first output from an AI and bam, it's this quality. AI will get there in time but let's not pretend the human isn't there picking what's good and what isn't before you see and hear it.
Re: (Score:2)
Yet.
Re: (Score:2)
I do not think AI "will get there in time". How would it? There is no credible path.
Re: (Score:2)
GIGO - It's dependent on the quality of in input, e.g. if you upload a clear, concise, coherent, cohesive (i.e. well-written) paper, chapter, article, or whatever, it'll work wonders. If the writing's shit, you'll get shit output. The the writing's meh... well, you know.
I just tried it out with a book chapter by an academic writer, who's one of those rare examples of a brilliant academic but also a very competent science communicator, i.e. he can make complex, new concepts accessible & understandable