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Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

illuminate.google.com

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Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#226
post #152

Synthesized voices are legitimately a great way to read more and give your eyes a break. I personally prefer just converting a page or book to an audiobook myself locally. The new piper TTS models are easy to run locally and work very well. I made a simple CLI application and some other folks here liked it so figured I post it. https://github.com/C-Loftus/QuickPiperAudiobook

Thanks for sharing, I tried to build and set this up on my Macbook (ARM/M1) but seems that Piper currently doesn't support MacOS yet. This is a very useful tool, I will Star it and wait until Piper supports MacOS in the future.

I got Piper TTS running in a Docker container (I found that the issue is related to Python version and "phenomenize" library). If you're curious / interested in getting this to work, happy to help out & share the code. My contact is in my profile.

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#228
post #222

Why is this appealing? Why would one prefer this AI conversation to the actual source? Can these be agents and allow the listener to ask questions / interact?

many times I’ve wanted to listen to a summarisation of a chapter from a textbook I’m reading. this can be useful in at least 3 ways:

1) it prepares me for the real studying. by being exposed to the gist of the material before actual studying, im very confident that the subsequent real study session would be more effective

2) i can brush up easily on key concepts, if im unable to sit properly, eg while commuting. but even if i were, a math textbook can be too dense for this purpose, and i often just want to refresh my memory on key concepts. and often im tired of _reading_ symbols or words, that’s when id prefer to actually _listen_, in a way, using a muscle that’s not tired

3) if im struggling with something, i can play this 5min chapter explanation multiple times a day throughout the week, while doing stuff, and engaging with it in a casual way. i think this would “soften” the struggle tremendously, and increase the chances of grasping the thing next time i tackle it

also id like a “temperature” knob, that i could tweak for how much in detail i want it to go

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#229
post #222

Why is this appealing? Why would one prefer this AI conversation to the actual source? Can these be agents and allow the listener to ask questions / interact?

many times I’ve wanted to listen to a summarisation of a chapter from a textbook I’m reading. this can be useful in at least 3 ways: 1) it prepares me for the real studying. by being exposed to the gist of the material before actual studying, im very confident that the subsequent real study session would be more effective 2) i can brush up easily on key concepts, if im unable to sit properly, eg while commuting. but…

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