Google Adds Button to Generate Error-Laden AI Podcast About Your Search Results Instead of Just Reading Them Like a Functioning Member of Society
Google has released a baffling new AI feature that turns your web search into a podcast.
Why anybody would want to enable the feature is unclear. Why be plagued by misleading and hallucinated AI Overviews search results when you can have a robotic voice read them out loud instead? Have we really lost the ability as a species to parse written information, nevermind original sources?
The opt-in feature — which currently lives inside Google's experimental "Labs" section and has to be manually turned on — harnesses the power of the company's Gemini AI model to turn a search query into "quick, conversational audio overviews."
According to the tech giant, an "audio overview can help you get a lay of the land, offering a convenient, hands-free way to absorb information whether you're multitasking or simply prefer an audio experience."
But is this anything anybody really asked for? Having two fake podcast hosts rant about a subject you're researching — likely with a smattering of hallucinations — sounds like an incredibly counterintuitive and needlessly obtuse way to get quick access to information.
The feature first surfaced last year as part of Google's NotebookLM, a note-taking tool that uses AI to help users organize their thoughts and summarize notes. An "Audio Overviews" feature can then take your notes and turn them into AI-generated podcasts, with often unintentionally hilarious results.
While AI researchers have gushed over the feature, using it to turn Wikipedia pages into hours-long podcast episodes they allegedly listen to, we still can't shake the feeling that Google may be barking up the wrong tree.
Particularly when it comes to search results, where speed has conventionally trumped anything else, turning AI summaries into rambling audio snippets sounds pretty exhausting.
Besides, if Google's AI Overviews are anything to go by, the tech's propensity to make up facts is still enormous. The feature has been plaguing users with outright wrong and misleading information for quite some time now, with users desperately reaching out to Reddit to find ways to disable it.
It's a sign of the times, with tech companies desperately looking for ways to shoehorn AI into every aspect of our digital lives to justify their enormous investments in the space.
Soon we won't just be inundated with AI slop in text and image format; a fake podcast host could one day be talking your head off while you're simply trying to figure out the winner of the Pedro Pascal lookalike contest in Brooklyn.
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