[HN Gopher] NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over...
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NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages
Author : saikatsg
Score : 204 points
Date : 2025-04-30 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
| anyfactor wrote:
| https://support.google.com/notebooklm/answer/15731776
| - Afrikaans - Albanian - Arabic - Armenian
| - Azerbaijani - Basque - Bengali - Bulgarian
| - Burmese (Myanmar) - Catalan - Cebuano -
| Chinese (Simplified) - Chinese (Traditional) -
| Croatian - Czech - Danish - Dutch -
| English - Estonian - Filipino - Finnish -
| French (Canada) - French (European) - Galician
| - Georgian - German - Greek - Gujarati -
| Haitian Creole - Hebrew - Hindi - Hungarian
| - Icelandic - Indonesian - Italian - Japanese
| - Javanese - Kannada - Konkani - Korean -
| Latin - Latvian - Lithuanian - Macedonian
| - Maithili - Malay - Malayalam - Marathi
| - Nepali - Norwegian (Bokmal) - Norwegian (Nynorsk)
| - Oriya - Pashto - Persian - Polish -
| Portuguese (Brazil) - Portuguese (Portugal) - Punjabi
| - Romanian - Russian - Serbian (Cyrillic) -
| Sindhi - Sinhala - Slovak - Slovenian -
| Spanish (European) - Spanish (Latin America) -
| Spanish (Mexico) - Swahili - Swedish - Tamil
| - Telugu - Thai - Turkish - Ukrainian -
| Urdu - Vietnamese
| riffic wrote:
| cool, thanks for the wall of text.
| jszymborski wrote:
| There's a collapse feature (the [-] link at the top of the
| post)
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's still far too much for a HN comment.
|
| You have to scroll down a couple pages' worth before you
| even realize this might be SO long you need to collapse it.
| So then you've got to scroll back UP a couple pages, find
| the teensy [-] link...
|
| It's enough to just post the link to the list of languages.
| The list itself doesn't belong in a comment here, when it's
| that long.
| riffic wrote:
| not to mention most of us know how to click to a source
| to view the authoritative list. why repeat it here?
| behnamoh wrote:
| > Persian
|
| I'm glad the name of my native language is written correctly.
| In many cases, people say "Farsi", which is offensive to many
| Iranians because it's the Arabic version of the word "Parsi"
| (unlike Persian, Arabic doesn't have "p", "g", "ch", "zh").
|
| It's like someone calling English "Anglaise" because that's how
| the French say it.
|
| PS: Contrary to common belief, Persian and Arabic are totally
| different languages, though they have borrowed words from one
| another (think English and French). Persian is an Indo-European
| language whereas Arabic is Aramaic (same roots as Hebrew).
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Small nitpicking, Arabic is from a different branch of
| Semitic languages than Aramaic or Hebrew (which are very
| similar).
|
| And TIL I learned that Aramaic replaced Hebrew in Judea
| because the Persian Empire maintained Aramaic as the official
| administrative language, and Jews brought it back, coming
| back from the Babylonian captivity.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Interesting. This is the first time I'm hearing that Farsi is
| offensive to Iranians. None of my Irani friends have objected
| so I'm curious if I'm missing something.
|
| Wikipedia says Farsi should be avoided in Western languages,
| but what about others? Persian is called Farsi in Indian
| subcontinent due to the deep historical connections we share.
| We have proverbs saying Farsi is the sign of a learned person
| etc.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _It 's like someone calling English "Anglaise" because
| that's how the French say it._
|
| That _is_ the case for some other languages, though. We call
| the language German rather than Deutsch because Germani was
| the Latin name for tribes in the area, for example.
|
| Or native names get modified too -- in English we don't call
| it Espanish, just Spanish, even though it comes from espanol.
|
| The names of languages in other languages tend to get
| modified in tons of different and random ways for lots of
| reasons. Is there really a reason to take offense at it?
|
| It doesn't bother me that Italians call me an americano
| instead of an American. It's just a letter change. So why is
| it so bothersome that it's called Farsi rather than Parsi?
| Can't the change from "p" to "f" be seen as an interesting
| historical quirk, due to the fascinating effect of Arabic on
| European languages in the Middle Ages? At the same time that
| we got Arabic words like "algebra" and "alcohol"?
| omneity wrote:
| Arabic is not Aramaic. Please correct your sources.
|
| I'm also quite curious about the sounds of "ch" and "zh"
| which exist in Arabic as sh and j, or did you mean something
| else?
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Do people find NotebookLM useful? For my use case of converting
| papers into podcasts, the explanations are too general (which
| misses the important parts of the paper) and contain too much
| fluff.
|
| I suspect that changing the underlying model to Gemini 2.5 Pro
| would produce better transcripts, but right now there's no way of
| determining what model is being used.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I've run them on my own papers and, while sometimes they are
| accurate, they are sometimes very very wrong and misrepresent
| things. And I don't mean in nuanced or unimportant ways.
|
| The TTS is amazing, but the audio overviews are frankly useless
| for me.
| harryf wrote:
| It's useful for getting summaries of long YouTube videos - I'm
| found it semi helpful for improving my Davinci Resolve skills.
|
| That said Google is screwing the pooch as usual by trying to
| make it another walled garden. Slap an API on NoteboolLM
| already! The market research has already been done - there's
| even an unofficial API
| https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooklm/comments/1eti9iz/api_for...
| energy123 wrote:
| For YouTube videos it's hard to beat (1) copy transcript to
| clipboard (from eg tactiq) (2) paste into LLM chat and ask
| for summary
| skeptrune wrote:
| It's hard for every AI product to beat that workflow lol.
| It works well for basically everything.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Full disclosure, I work for Google opinions are my own etc
| etc
|
| The LLM built into YouTube is one of the few LLM chatbots
| bolted onto existing apps that I actually find useful. Not
| just for summaries but questions like "what is the
| timestamp in this 2 hour video where they talk about
| _____".
| hu3 wrote:
| > "what is the timestamp in this 2 hour video where they
| talk about _____"
|
| wow I gave up searching specific timestampos of long
| videos before. Never again.
|
| Thank you!
| jjwiseman wrote:
| "LLM built into YouTube..." The what now? This is the
| first I've heard of this.
| dieortin wrote:
| Or just paste the video URL onto Gemini and ask for
| summary, no need to search for any transcript
| pottertheotter wrote:
| What's interesting is that the create podcast thing is just a
| feature of NotebookLM. But everyone thinks that's what
| NotebookLM is
| bongodongobob wrote:
| It seems to be the only unique feature though. Any LLM can
| summarize things for me or make bullet points.
| alphabetting wrote:
| The one other unique thing I use from them is the
| interactive mind maps. Like a table of contents on steroids
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| If you have a corpus of documents you are working with (say
| thousands of pages of related standards docs), Notebook can
| be handy for doing targeted summaries of aspects of the
| docs with pointers back into the actual docs to the
| relevant source material. That's something I end up needing
| a lot (I've never used the podcast feature) and so it feels
| very differentiated to me...
| jcims wrote:
| I haven't really found it interesting for technical content but
| do think it's somewhat useful for hashing out more subjective
| and/or personal things like goals, difficulties, conflict, etc.
| jsnell wrote:
| You can enter a prompt from the "customize" dialog. Have you
| tried asking for a more specifics, assume the audience is an
| expert on the subject, and cut down on the fluff?
| alphabetting wrote:
| I found this prompt online and tweaking it for audio overviews
| works extremely well for me.
|
| https://open.substack.com/pub/lawsen/p/notebooklm-podcasts-b...
|
| Generate a deep technical briefing, not a light podcast
| overview. Focus on technical accuracy, comprehensive analysis,
| and extended duration, tailored for an expert listener. The
| listener has a technical background comparable to a research
| scientist on an AGI safety team at a leading AI lab. Use
| precise terminology found in the source materials. Aim for
| significant length and depth. Aspire to the comprehensiveness
| and duration of podcasts like 80,000 Hours, running for 2 hours
| or more.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Where do you put this prompt?
| sumedh wrote:
| In the Audio Overview, click on Customize and enter the
| prompt then generate the podcast.
| dobladov wrote:
| I find NotebookML really useful as a book reading companion, by
| simply uploading the same book I want to read and asking
| questions about it, like:
|
| - List the characters in chapter [x] and add a small
| description about each one. - What's [x] device used for? -
| What happened in chapter [x]?
|
| It works very well without hallucinations and referencing all
| the answers.
| bradly wrote:
| At Shopify I working as an engineer in financial services and
| certain changes required approval by our banking partners. I
| was able to upload our credit policies to NotebookLM and easily
| ask questions without having to ping our the legal team in
| Slack. I'm about as bearish as they come as far as AI tools go
| and NotebookLM was one of the few tools that felt useful to me
| straight away.
| HanClinto wrote:
| I've found it very useful for providing accessible
| introductions to technical papers that are otherwise difficult
| for me to get started with understanding.
|
| If I encounter a paper that is too difficult for me to digest
| just by reading, then I take a step back, feed it into
| NotebookLM, and listen to that summary. I've only done this a
| few times, but so far it hasn't failed to give me the overview
| and momentum that I need to take another stab and successfully
| dig into the paper and digest it on my own.
|
| As others have noted, it can gloss over certain details and
| miss important points from time to time, but overall it does a
| fantastic job of giving me an introduction to a complex topic
| and making it far less indimidating / overwhelming.
| da_chicken wrote:
| I've found it useful for processing the documentation for our
| data system. The vendor provides the doc in something around 60
| PDF files, and a lot of the information is poorly organized
| within the PDFs.
|
| I can say, "Hey, NotebookLM, explain the difference between
| feature X and feature Y to me," or, "How do I configure Z to
| work the way we want?" And while the answers still kinda suck
| because the documentation is pretty shitty, it's way faster
| than digging through the PDFs. And it cites the PDFs so I can
| (with some trouble) find the actual documentation in the PDF if
| I need it.
|
| The worst part of it is that it only accepts 50 PDFs at once.
|
| Honestly, though, the best use for it I've seen was when my GM
| added the PDF rulebooks to our TTRPG to NotebookLM. We were
| then able to ask NotebookLM rules questions, and it would
| answer us pretty well. That's what it's really great for.
|
| I don't care about the audio features at all. The first thing I
| do is close the audio pane.
| TekMol wrote:
| I find the podcast style audio it produces super annoying.
|
| Is there an easy way to simply have text read to me unaltered?
| crawsome wrote:
| I really is an obnoxious level of over-enthusiasm.
| kleiba wrote:
| Give German a try - trust me, you don't have to speak the
| language but anyone can tell that it's quite different in
| tone. No valley girls in Deutschland!
| sega_sai wrote:
| Absolutely the same complaint. I wanted to see if it could
| summarize papers well, but I just could not handle all the
| conversation and attempts to make it 'exciting'. Especially in
| areas where I already know the background.
| threeducks wrote:
| Over seven years ago, this has been foretold exactly by the
| show Silicon Valley:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3pYZwol6Dc&t=73s
|
| Transcript of the fridge scene: Fridge (after
| a bar code was scanned): "Ah, there we go." Gilfoyle:
| "It's bad enough that it has to talk. Does it need fake vocal
| ticks like 'uh'." Dinesh: "Well it just makes it sound
| more human." Gilfoyle: "Humans are shit. This thing is
| addressing problems that don't exist. It's solutionism at its
| worst. We are dumbing down machines that are inherently
| superior."
|
| I would like to have a Gilfyole mode for NotebookLM where the
| machine answers only with cold precision instead of endless
| "Mmmhmm", "Yeah!", "Amazing!", "That's so cool!".
| shreezus wrote:
| It's one of those things that's impressive initially, but after
| generating a couple it feels quite formulaic.
| ljoshua wrote:
| NotebookLM audio overviews/podcasts have been an absolute boon
| for my homeschooled kids. They devour audiobooks and podcasts,
| and they love learning by listening to these first. Then when we
| come together for class, we discuss what was covered, and can
| spend time diving into specifics or doing activities based on the
| content. It's super nice to have another option for a learning
| medium here.
|
| To generate them, we've scanned the physical book pages, and then
| with a simple Python script fed the images into GCP's Document AI
| to extract the text en-masse, and concatenated the results
| together into a text-only version of the chapter. Give that text
| to NotebookLM and run with it.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| I've used them. They're very nifty. Google did good here.
|
| One thing I'll note is they only cover the "high level"
| aspects. No depth. I'd recommend them for someone who is either
| already very knowledgeable or for someone not at all
| knowledgeable who is looking for an overview before they plan
| to do deeper learning/studying through reading.
| bbatsell wrote:
| > or for someone not at all knowledgeable who is looking for
| an overview before they plan to do deeper learning/studying
| through reading
|
| Yep. This is what I have used them (sparingly) for -- a
| scaffold to build the deeper learning onto. My brain
| struggles to retain information when it doesn't have a high-
| level understanding of how/why a system works and how
| individual parts connect and interact, even if it is all
| eventually revealed later.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Very well said.
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| I hope you encourage your kids to actually read as well.
| ljoshua wrote:
| Oh don't worry, they make _excellent_ use of their library
| cards. :)
| tinyhouse wrote:
| They don't have an app? strange.
| hu3 wrote:
| I like to feed Hacker News comments to generate a podcast.
|
| It's good to get the big picture about the discussion with 300+
| comments.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| The best feature is by far the ability to interact with the
| "hosts" to ask for clarifications or to guide them into focusing
| on a particular aspect; even for things that weren't covered in
| the source material.
| lenwood wrote:
| I like the NotebookLM podcasting feature, have used it a few
| times to come up to speed. There's one quirk of the dialogue that
| I find annoying though, the two speakers finish one another's
| sentences. At first I thought that was a nice touch, but it
| happens often enough that it became distracting. I should
| experiment with the prompt to limit how often it happens.
| mikeocool wrote:
| NotebookLM podcasts are like a caricature of a real podcast.
| Every little verbal technique or narrative style that might be
| used by a normal podcaster in a subtle way is taken to an
| extreme.
|
| The last one I listened to one host would repeat a keyword or
| phrase the other host had just said for emphasis -- except they
| did incessantly -- with multiple words in every sentence for many
| sentences in a row.
| latentsea wrote:
| > NotebookLM podcasts are like a caricature of a real podcast.
| Every little verbal technique or narrative style that might be
| used by a normal podcaster in a subtle way is taken to an
| extreme.
|
| So true.
| gervwyk wrote:
| Although I 100% agree, there is still a place for it. We place
| generated conversations with our case studies, and have receive
| good positive feedback so far, especially from the non-
| technical crowd. See example https://resonancy.io/case-
| studies/flava-process-digitization
|
| Of course one can invest more in better authenticity but for
| what it is, I believe it is a good bang for effort..
|
| Also, if you listen to it for a while, and get over the initial
| cringe, it becomes enjoyable, at least for me. Some visitors
| even asked if it was Ai generated. lol
|
| Excited and frightened about the future where its more a real.
| This was a cool comparison I came across recently [2]
|
| Interestingly I saw today the Descripts Avatars are made to
| sound and look non-realistic on purpose to avoid I guess all
| kind of issues, but they claim they want to leave something
| authentic on the table for real content. Which I think is a
| good move..
|
| [1] - https://resonancy.io/case-studies/flava-process-
| digitization [2] - https://yummy-fir-7a4.notion.site/dia
| Jolter wrote:
| I really enjoyed the "fire!" example. Very naturalistic!
| retinaros wrote:
| It is slop in ways that even ghibli OAI is not. I never
| understood why it ever got good press
| tkgally wrote:
| I tried it with Japanese, and it sounded about as good as in
| English. Only at one point did it sound unnatural. Japanese two-
| person conversation uses a lot of backchannelling ( _aizuchi_ ),
| that is, semilinguistic sounds made by the listener to indicate
| attention and emotional reaction. At one point, the female voice
| said very distinctly " _fumu fumu,_ " which is how such _aizuchi_
| might be written in a script or manga. In actual speech, though,
| it would be a continuous sound without syllables and with a
| rising and /or falling intonation.
|
| That brief TTS-like moment was the only time I was reminded that
| the voices were not human.
| latentsea wrote:
| Sometimes you actually say fumu fumu out loud in a conversation
| for comedic effect.
| tkgally wrote:
| Yes. In fact, I laughed when I heard the NotebookLM voice say
| that. It was comically out of place in the context.
| okdood64 wrote:
| Have an audio link and timestamp to this?
| tkgally wrote:
| The link is here:
|
| https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/c36ea335-6686-474d
| -bf...
|
| The _fumu fumu_ is at 01:50.
|
| The podcast is about the impact of AI on higher education
| in Japan. I prompted NotebookLM briefly about that topic,
| and it collected ten sources in Japanese and English that
| it used as the basis for the audio overview.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| I really don't understand why they went with this podcast style.
| Sure, it makes an impression the first few times, great for a
| showcase or an announcement. The problem though is that it soon
| becomes pretty annoying, especially because the hosts go back and
| forth between knowing nothing and knowing everything about the
| topic. They should at least choose randomly which one does the
| explaining to whom.
| razster wrote:
| Absolutely agree with you, we ran into the same issue. Our
| company actually tried using it for our software documentation
| and user onboarding, hoping it would be a helpful and engaging
| format. But the podcast-style delivery just didn't fit our
| needs. It's fine for a quick showcase or intro, but for ongoing
| support or business-oriented material, the format became
| distracting. If only they offered alternative styles--something
| more structured and professional--we might have stuck with it.
| moribunda wrote:
| You should check new features - like asking questions as a
| listener.
|
| I don't use it a lot, but it's useful when you want to have an
| engaging audio interface to long (50p+) reports, which you
| wouldn't normally read because it's not your area of expertise
| or you don't have time, but you can listen while doing some
| cardio or chores.
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