Exploring NotebookLM: How Google’s AI is Revolutionizing Audio Summaries
Something absolutely mind-blowing has come out recently, and I couldn’t wait to share it with you. If you’ve been following my previous posts or videos, you know that I’m all about using AI and automation to streamline workflows. Well, Google’s NotebookLM just leveled up with its latest feature—audio overviews—and it’s blowing my mind.
In the past, I’ve used tools like Make.com to transcribe my voice memos and blog posts, and now, NotebookLM lets you upload notes, PDFs, and even websites, and then generate a polished audio summary. For someone like me, who lives in the tech space, this is huge.
What is NotebookLM?
If you’ve been paying attention to Google’s AI developments, you probably heard about Project Tailwind last year, which was all about reimagining how we take notes. They’ve now evolved it into NotebookLM, a tool where you can upload documents, PDFs, blog posts—basically any text you have—and not only chat with it but also get an AI-generated audio summary.
Imagine being able to throw a blog post or meeting transcript into this tool, and out comes a podcast-style summary. That’s exactly what I did, and the results are impressive.
How I Used It
I wanted to test this tool out with a couple of projects. First, I added a link to this VMware blog post, and NotebookLM gave me a super cool audio breakdown—like two people having a conversation about the topic.
Check out what it generated:
Next, I threw in a blog post I wrote a few months ago, Navigating Your 20s: Advice for a Wild and Rewarding Decade, and the AI generated over 14 minutes of audio. Not bad, right? Listening to it felt like experiencing my own blog in a whole new way.
Check out that generation:
The Cool (and Not So Cool) Parts
What’s incredibly exciting is the audio format. If you’ve ever tried to take on something boring, like reading a company’s financial report (yawn), this tool could give it new life. Imagine throwing in a 10Q report from Nvidia or another tech giant and getting a podcast-style breakdown of the earnings!
Check out this conversation about NVIDA’s latest earnings. (Note that I have no financial stake in NVIDIA. I just wanted to provide an example of a relatively boring piece of media, like a 10Q for demo purposes only)
But, like all new tech, there are some limitations. You can’t yet edit the audio or transcript after it’s been generated. So if there’s a mispronounced word, you’re stuck with it for now. It’s also still experimental, which means the processing time can be a bit slow. But hey, it’s early days, and the potential here is game-changing.
Inception Edit
Now, of course, I am going to publish this blog post, but then I’m going to run it through NotebookLM and have it generate an audio summary of this post. I’m excited to hear the two AI-generated speakers discuss this very blog post. It’s like an inception moment—AI summarizing a blog about using AI for summarization!
Check it out:
What’s Next?
I’m super pumped to see where this technology goes. If you create content, manage a lot of presentations, or want to easily convert your notes into audio for podcasts, NotebookLM could be a game-changer for you, too.
I’ll keep diving into this stuff, especially as generative AI continues to evolve. And if you’re as excited about AI as I am, be sure to follow me on LinkedIn. I post about these kinds of tools as much as I can (you know, around my day job).