Comment by ghshephard
15 hours ago
Where do you get the "low-quality" part from - my experience with NotebookLM is that they create much higher quality, more informative, more fact based, and more concise podcasts than 99% of the stuff I listen to. I've mostly switched entirely over to NotebookLM for my podcast listening. They, generally, offer a far higher quality experience from my perspective.
Maybe you have the problem backwards - we accidentally end up listening to non NotebookLM podcasts?
A coworker fed some EU trade regulation page and its official FAQ to NotebookLM, and I was quite impressed with the results.
It was factually accurate, and presented the topic in a manner that was easy to digest and kept it interesting.
I didn't plan to but ended up listening to the whole thing, and I normally don't enjoy the podcast format.
For someone new to the topic, it'd be a pretty great intro compared to reading the official pages.
Yes. For example I fed it a public tender and associated regulations in Norwegian and it was able to answer questions about the parts I mas interested in correctly and succinctly. I have also fed it research papers that normally I would not have the patience or knowledge to go through on my own.
In terms of actual usefulness, it’s one of the AI tools that most impressed me.
The main issue is, of course, privacy.
I have tried to reproduce something similar using AnythingLLM and the low tier Llama models, but of course the experience is much worse, both in terms of results, response times and UI. If someone knows of a better local setup, I’m all ears.
I have considered a Workspace subscription if I could actually trust Google to make good on the commitment of not reading your stuff, which I’m finding hard to do…
I think OP is presenting a different problem: while this tool gives the possibility of creating good quality podcasts, it also enables spammers to quickly generate tons of garbage episodes just to profit from the advertisement they put in it.
It's interesting assumption that by virtue of being AI generated, it's considered bad/fake. 20 years ago, people hated how photoshop changed the photo design industry, NotebookLM is knocking on the door now.
I'm excited by AI, but I've also tried using this specific one to generate a podcast based on one of my own blog posts and will only try again due to this product announcement rather than because I think the state of the art is already "there".
On the plus side, the speech is almost perfect; so good, that I sincerely hope the voices themselves are never fully under user control.
With regards to the actual summary of the content I gave them, I would say they are grade B: only mostly correct, they're still inventing things I didn't say and missing things I did say.
That's not to say humans don't make mistakes, I still consider this objectively impressive, that is able to reach even this level was SciFi when I was a kid — but why waste time on a grade-B podcast when the AAA-tier costs you as a consumer a 30 second advert?
Thanks to Photoshop and the similar, many people have a false idea of what a normal body looks like.
If AI texts have a similar effect then AI = bad is quite correct.
Personally, I hate even the idea of an AI made podcast, because to me podcasts are personal and emotional. They're about the individual humans who make them. They're not just a source of "information".
I'm glad there are different kinds of podcasts for different people now.
I've always absolutely hated the focus on the individual humans and their personalities behind the podcast, and wished they'd be a better source of well-structured "information".
I never listened to a podcast I didn't get frustrated with, even at 2x speed. These NotebookLM podcasts have been exactly what I've always wished podcasts were.
Have you listened to any audio overviews in NotebookLM? They can be surprisingly good.
I don't know... I think it's pretty cool. In fact, I just found a podcast talking about this very thread (about a minute in, your comment even gets discussed ;-) https://drive.google.com/file/d/130s6OzcfsZam8V-6S5ugKmc0M7O...
I may have to re-task my paperclip making AI on generating podcasts...
Interesting, are there any podcasts in particular that you recommend? Everything I’ve heard from it just seems like the most banal, cookie cutter stereotype of a podcast with nothing but extremely surface level summarization of a given article, peppered with random cliches and fake sounding reactions “Wow! ok, so let’s hear more about that. I’m intrigued!” “OK, let’s dive deep.” Etc.
DeepDive AI - I'm addicted to it.
That does not appear to be an AI generated podcast.
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That has not been my experience. The podcasts are vapid and full of cliches.
Sounds like they learned the source material well
Okay, I will bite.
Its trained on too many shallow podcasts. Go compare any of NotebookLM podcast with an episode of Hardcore History. The latter goes into much more depth (even when you account of it being much longer).