Because you wanted this, right?
NotebookLM is undoubtedly one of Google's best implementations of generative AI technology, giving you the ability to explore documents and notes with a Gemini AI model. Last year, Google added the ability to generate so-called "audio overviews" of your source material in NotebookLM. Now, Google has brought thosefake AI podcaststo search results as a test. Instead of clicking links or reading the AI Overview, you can have two nonexistent peopletell you what the results say.
This feature is not currently rolling out widely—it's available in search labs, which means you have tomanually enable it. Anyone can opt in to the new Audio Overview search experience, though. If you join the test, you'll quickly see the embedded player in Google search results. However, it's not at the top with the usual block of AI-generated text. Instead, you'll see it after the first few search results, below the "People also ask" knowledge graph section.
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Google isn't wasting resources to generate the audio automatically, so you have to click the generate button to get started. A few seconds later, you're given a back-and-forth conversation between two AI voices summarizing the search results. The player includes a list of sources from which the overview is built, as well as the option to speed up or slow down playback.
Google suggests searching for "how do noise cancellation headphones work" as an example, but we're seeing Audio Overviews appear in a lot of searches. You can even search for "Google audio overviews" to hear an Audio Overview explain what an Audio Overview is. That's neat in a recursive technological horror kind of way.
The overviews we've listened to are mostly accurate for simple topics, but there are many more opportunities for errors here. In NotebookLM, the AI is grounded by the small collection of documents and websites you feed into the system. With search results, there are more opportunities for the AI to go down the wrong path while summarizing. This is a problem we'veseen repeatedlywith text AI Overviews.
Search is not the first expansion of Google's fake podcasts. Since debuting in NotebookLM, Audio Overviews have also shown up in Google's Gemini Deep Research mode and Google Docs. Given Google's rapid advancement of AI features, we expect to see Audio Overviews in even more places going forward. And don't be surprised if Audio Overviews invade your search results soon, even if you skip this test. After all, the text-based AI Overviews were only in labs for a couple of months before they graduated to the default search experience.
