With NotebookLM from Google, you can now guide the hosts of your AI podcast

Google’s NotebookLM now lets you customize podcast-like audio overviews. Before you generate a discussion using the Notes app, you can give your AI moderators instructions on what topic to focus on or even tailor their discussions to different audiences.

Google last month launched NotebookLM’s audio overviews with two AI hosts that provide a “lively” discussion of your research. The company notes that its audio overviews are not intended to be a “comprehensive or objective overview of a topic” and are “simply a reflection of the sources you upload and the instructions you provide.”

To customize the chat, open a notebook in NotebookLM, select “Notebook Guide,” then navigate to the “Deep Dive Conversation” option. From there, click “Customize” and enter the instructions you want your AI hosts to follow. NotebookLM will then generate a conversation based on the instructions you provide.

In addition to removing NotebookLM’s experimental label, Google is introducing background listening for audio overviews, so you can listen to the AI ​​presenters’ discussion while working in other areas of the app. Last month, Google NotebookLM also added the ability to go deeper into YouTube videos with transcriptions.