Live data from Hacker News

Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

illuminate.google.com

11–20 of 251 posts

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#11
This is really cool. Although I wouldn't put money on a Google project sticking around even if it was a full fledged product!

More of a tech demo than anything else.

What's wild about this is that the voices seem way better than GCP's TTS that I've seen. Any way to get those voices as an API?

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#15

Great idea. I wonder how long until we'd see a lot of "autogenerated" podcasts with syndicated advertising inside spamming the podcast space. Like with robovoiced videos on YT reading some scraped content.

Would you listen to an auto-generated podcast? Seems like removing the humans from the equation kind of defeats the purpose.

People have been reading bot spam for ages, and already watch auto generated spam. I'd expect this to pick up once it gets cheap enough

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#16

Is that audio all generated? All the pauses, breaths, speed ups and everything?

From the "Help" modal: "Illuminate is an experimental technology that uses AI to adapt content to your learning preferences. Illuminate generates audio with two AI-generated voices in conversation, discussing the key points of select papers. Illuminate is currently optimized for published computer science academic papers. As an experimental product, the generated audio with two AI-generated voices in conversation may…

Wow. I did not pick anything in the voice as a clue that it's generated. So does it make it current best text to audio system?

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#18

Great idea. I wonder how long until we'd see a lot of "autogenerated" podcasts with syndicated advertising inside spamming the podcast space. Like with robovoiced videos on YT reading some scraped content.

Would you listen to an auto-generated podcast? Seems like removing the humans from the equation kind of defeats the purpose.

I don't know, it depends on whether I get to control the auto generated podcast or someone else.

If I get to control it and I can have it draw in enough interesting angles into something, I think it could be fun. I wouldn't replace one of my favorites, but I'd gladly use something that could generate creative new content.

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#19

This is really cool. Although I wouldn't put money on a Google project sticking around even if it was a full fledged product! More of a tech demo than anything else. What's wild about this is that the voices seem way better than GCP's TTS that I've seen. Any way to get those voices as an API?

Self-answer but leaving in case anyone else has the same question... seems there are some new options in GCP TTS. Both "studio" and "jorney" are new since I last checked (and I check pretty often).

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#20

Great idea. I wonder how long until we'd see a lot of "autogenerated" podcasts with syndicated advertising inside spamming the podcast space. Like with robovoiced videos on YT reading some scraped content.

Would you listen to an auto-generated podcast? Seems like removing the humans from the equation kind of defeats the purpose.

If it seemed full of annoying product placement, no. If the content and presentation were sufficiently good, yes.

I believe (but then again I also want to believe, so make of this what you will) that I'd be holding the AI to only the same standards I hold humans to. It's not like I'm trying to build a relationship to the speaker in either case.

Post reply on HN