Google’s NotebookLM now lets you customize your AI podcasts in tone and length

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• NotebookLM introduced new audio formats on Wednesday.
• The formats offer users more interactive, customizable information distillation. 
• The tool could save students and workers time.

Google’s NotebookLM audio overview feature went viral because it uses AI to create engaging, realistic podcasts from your content. The feature just got a facelift, making it even more helpful, allowing you to customize the podcast to suit your needs even further. 

Also: I used NotebookLM for a month. Here’s why it’s a game changer

On Wednesday, Google launched new audio formats in NotebookLM. With the new format, users can continue to convert their information, notes, and data that a user input into podcasts, but this time they will have the option to customize the end results with four new styles that vary in tone and length. 

What’s new?

The four styles now include the default audio format: Deep Dive, which thoroughly examines your information sources for a comprehensive review; Brief, which provides a two-minute-or-less overview of need-to-know information; Critique, which critically analyzes your material; and Debate, which takes your information and gets two hosts to debate it. 

Users can customize the audio formats to make them shorter or longer, as well as instruct the AI hosts to focus on a certain material included within NotebookLM. NotebookLM’s demo on X shows an example prompt requesting that the hosts only cover information from the article on Italy, as seen below. The new formats also feature new voices, a highly requested feature. 

This is distinctly different from NotebookLM’s audio deliveries in the past, where users could only use one standard format. The new feature better accommodates different types of learners and needs. For example, if you are in a rush, you can now opt for a quick overlook of your document via the Brief feature, or if you need ot be engaged with more deliberating, the Debate feature may be better suited for your needs. 

How to access?

Google shared in the X post that the feature is available in all languages and that rollout starts today. Google added that it should be available for all users this week. As seen in the picture at the top of the article or in the demo above, selecting the new format is intuitive, as it will automatically populate as an option when clicking the Audio Overview function. 

The various audio formats build on useful functionalities within the AI-powered NotebookLM that save users time by assisting them with organization and information comprehension. When ZDNET’s Sabrina Ortiz used the AI product, she called the organization system “incredibly helpful” for workers and students alike, as it can generate study guides, a briefing document, FAQs, a timeline, or a podcast. 

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The new audio formats should save workers and students time ahead of a meeting or class preparations when they are tasked with reading several documents or discussion threads and presenting ideas on them. The tool does much of the heavy lifting for the user, providing a digestible information stream, especially helpful as workers are constantly facing information and task overload, removing critical thought or mental expenditure. 

One pitfall of AI products, like chatbots or AI assistants, is their tendency to hallucinate information based on the hundreds of thousands of unreliable sources from the web. Since NotebookLM only uses the information users provide, the AI bot sources information from users’ curated sources, addressing a big pain point for working professionals.