Would you listen to a podcast created by AI?

Inspired by my recent completion of Google's AI Essentials course, I have been experimenting with ways to use AI for business. The experiments have been wide-ranging. Thus far I have used AI to conduct research, write emails, review legal documents, and summarize articles. It was this last experiment that led me to the potentially life-changing question:

"Do I ever really have to look at another PowerPoint presentation?"

Nothing against PowerPoint, but after 28 years of struggling through sleep-inducing "I'm not going to drain this slide" presentations, I am just personally not a fan. I would much rather read a detailed document or engage in a meaningful discussion.

It was shortly after asking this question that I discovered NotebookLM.

NotebookLM is an AI-powered research and note-taking tool developed by Google. It's designed to help users better understand and work with complex information contained within their documents.

Users can upload various document formats, including Google Docs, PDFs, and text files. NotebookLM then uses AI, particularly Google's Gemini models, to analyze and understand the content of these documents. ? This allows users to ask questions about their documents, and NotebookLM will provide answers grounded in the source material, with citations. NotebookLM can generate summaries, outlines, FAQs, study guides, and other content based on the uploaded documents. ?In essence, NotebookLM acts as a "virtual research assistant," helping users to extract valuable insights from their documents.

Most recently, a feature that has gained a lot of attention is the "Audio Overviews" which can turn documents into podcast-like audio discussions. ?

Wait. What?!?

So I can save a .PPT as a .PDF, upload it to NotebookLM, and have AI automagically create a podcast?!?

Yes.

To test this process, I took a sales deck I have presented a number of times and followed the steps above.

The result:

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/enterprise-ai-advantage/id1797982694

Podcasts on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/5JRvIK2zWLIFB1TogjVfMi?si=d98c3a8584ef423d

Amazon Music:

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a45717ff-3901-45ef-a774-4f236ad11be3/enterprise-ai-advantage

Have a listen.

I did and here's what I found:

• Many of the key points I make when presenting this content were discussed by the podcasters.
• The voices of the podcasters were oddly pleasant to listen to.
• I found the back-and-forth dialogue more interesting than listening to myself present the content. (there is a joke there somewhere)
• At first, I was suspect of listening to AI podcasters, but then realizing that I trained the AI with content I knew and trusted and they accurately represented it, I realized I really didn't care that they were not human.
• My mind starting racing with other potential uses for this tool.

Do I think that AI is going to replace podcasters? Absolutely not. Do I think that AI podcasters are better than human ones? Nope. Do I think there is value in using this format to help digest and share information in a more interesting way than standard documents or presentations?

Absolutely.

At a minimum, this experience has got me thinking about the way I create, share, and consume business content. What AI makes possible now not only challenges tried and true models, it changes the game.

The important thing is that we keep experimenting.

What do you think?

Would you listen to a podcast created by AI?

How has AI changed the way you create, share, and consume business content?

What experiments should we do next?

Let's discuss.