Google's NotebookLM is making the rounds on the internet (at least in my bubble). It's a new AI tool that Google pitches as a "personalized research assistant" but has evolved to be much more than that, including... a podcast generator.

Before diving deeper into what NotebookLM does, have a listen to a few of the podcasts I generated and judge for yourself how good (or bad) they are:

Podcast about my blog
https://alessandromarrella.com/audio/alessandromarrella-com-podcast.mp3

Podcast about LLAMA3.1's paper
https://alessandromarrella.com/audio/llama3-paper.mp3

Podcast about chess.com's privacy policy
https://alessandromarrella.com/audio/chess-privacy.mp3

In my opinion these podcasts could fool anyone to be "real". Even if the structure is similar, and the hosts are always excited no matter the topic, this is not very far from what happens in the average podcast (especially American ones, sorry :) ).

Generating a podcast using NotebookLM is very simple:

1. Sign in to NotebookLM
2. Accept the terms etc
3. Click "Upload Source", there you can upload a file, or paste a link directly, or read from your google drive. You can upload multiple docs as well.
4. In the "Audio Overview" section, click "Generate" and wait a few minutes...
5. Done! You should be able to play or download the audio directly in the UI.

As mentioned previously, NotebookLM is a research assistant, so you can also use it to ask questions about your documents, generate FAQs and study guides, and more.

It's a pretty cool tool that Google created, it's (for now) free, and I'm really happy we are moving beyond the "chatbot-style" interface with AI and exploring something new. Turns out LLMs are not only good at generating content, but also questions about the content you provide.

To learn more I recommend the always amazing Simon Willison's blog, and to try it yourself. It's really impressive and could be a really useful tool for learning new things.