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NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages

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Re: NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages

#31

Post by threeducks »

TekMol wrote: post #10

I find the podcast style audio it produces super annoying. Is there an easy way to simply have text read to me unaltered?

Over seven years ago, this has been foretold exactly by the show Silicon Valley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3pYZwol6Dc&t=73s

Transcript of the fridge scene:

    Fridge (after a bar code was scanned): "Ah, there we go."
    Gilfoyle: "It's bad enough that it has to talk. Does it need fake vocal ticks like 'uh'." 
    Dinesh: "Well it just makes it sound more human."
    Gilfoyle: "Humans are shit. This thing is addressing problems that don't exist. It's solutionism at its worst. We are dumbing down machines that are inherently superior."
I would like to have a Gilfyole mode for NotebookLM where the machine answers only with cold precision instead of endless "Mmmhmm", "Yeah!", "Amazing!", "That's so cool!".

Re: NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages

#33

Post by hu3 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #26
energy123 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For YouTube videos it's hard to beat (1) copy transcript to clipboard (from eg tactiq) (2) paste into LLM chat and ask for summary

Full disclosure, I work for Google opinions are my own etc etc The LLM built into YouTube is one of the few LLM chatbots bolted onto existing apps that I actually find useful. Not just for summaries but questions like "what is the timestamp in this 2 hour video where they talk about _____".

> "what is the timestamp in this 2 hour video where they talk about _____"

wow I gave up searching specific timestampos of long videos before. Never again.

Thank you!

Re: NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages

#34

Post by kleiba »

footlose_3815 wrote: post #18
TekMol wrote: post #10

I find the podcast style audio it produces super annoying. Is there an easy way to simply have text read to me unaltered?

I really is an obnoxious level of over-enthusiasm.

Give German a try - trust me, you don't have to speak the language but anyone can tell that it's quite different in tone. No valley girls in Deutschland!

Re: NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages

#35

Post by shreezus »

TekMol wrote: post #10

I find the podcast style audio it produces super annoying. Is there an easy way to simply have text read to me unaltered?

It's one of those things that's impressive initially, but after generating a couple it feels quite formulaic.

Re: NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages

#36

Post by lenwood »

I like the NotebookLM podcasting feature, have used it a few times to come up to speed. There's one quirk of the dialogue that I find annoying though, the two speakers finish one another's sentences. At first I thought that was a nice touch, but it happens often enough that it became distracting. I should experiment with the prompt to limit how often it happens.

Re: NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages

#37

Post by bbatsell »

SecretDreams wrote: post #21
ljoshua wrote: post #17

NotebookLM audio overviews/podcasts have been an absolute boon for my homeschooled kids. They devour audiobooks and podcasts, and they love learning by listening to these first. Then when we come together for class, we discuss what was covered, and can spend time diving into specifics or doing activities based on the content. It’s super nice to have another option for a learning medium here. To generate them, we’ve s…

I've used them. They're very nifty. Google did good here. One thing I'll note is they only cover the "high level" aspects. No depth. I'd recommend them for someone who is either already very knowledgeable or for someone not at all knowledgeable who is looking for an overview before they plan to do deeper learning/studying through reading.

> or for someone not at all knowledgeable who is looking for an overview before they plan to do deeper learning/studying through reading

Yep. This is what I have used them (sparingly) for — a scaffold to build the deeper learning onto. My brain struggles to retain information when it doesn’t have a high-level understanding of how/why a system works and how individual parts connect and interact, even if it is all eventually revealed later.

Re: NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages

#38

Post by bradly »

ipsum2 wrote: post #6

Do people find NotebookLM useful? For my use case of converting papers into podcasts, the explanations are too general (which misses the important parts of the paper) and contain too much fluff. I suspect that changing the underlying model to Gemini 2.5 Pro would produce better transcripts, but right now there's no way of determining what model is being used.

At Shopify I working as an engineer in financial services and certain changes required approval by our banking partners. I was able to upload our credit policies to NotebookLM and easily ask questions without having to ping our the legal team in Slack. I'm about as bearish as they come as far as AI tools go and NotebookLM was one of the few tools that felt useful to me straight away.

Re: NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages

#39

Post by suddenlybananas »

ljoshua wrote: post #17

NotebookLM audio overviews/podcasts have been an absolute boon for my homeschooled kids. They devour audiobooks and podcasts, and they love learning by listening to these first. Then when we come together for class, we discuss what was covered, and can spend time diving into specifics or doing activities based on the content. It’s super nice to have another option for a learning medium here. To generate them, we’ve s…

I hope you encourage your kids to actually read as well.
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