How To Create And Customize An AI Podcast With Google’s NotebookLM

Last week, Google announced a significant improvement to their NotebookLM AI podcasts, officially known as Audio Overviews. Specifically, they added the ability to focus the content of the podcast in several ways.

NotebookLM Podcast Basics

NotebookLM from Google is an AI model that you can add content to and then interact with. Unlike ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs), NotebookLM works only with the content you add to a “notebook,” in essence a folder. You can add various kinds of text documents, audio recordings, web links, and YouTube video URLs. Up to 50 sources can be added to one notebook.

The nature of NotebookLM offers interesting advantages, including fewer hallucinations than the big LLMs. The feature that has attracted the most attention, though, is the Audio Overview. Clicking the “Generate” button creates a podcast-like discussion between two AI “hosts” that is amazingly human. Synthesized voice tools have improved a lot from the robotic monotone days, but these hosts hesitate, interrupt each other, use filler words, and in general behave like humans. Both the script and delivery go beyond any other tool I’ve seen.

Until last week, though, users had no control over what the hosts would focus on. I uploaded my book Friction, nearly three hundred pages, and was impressed by the 15-minute discussion NotebookLM created. Clearly, though, only the tiniest fraction of the content could be covered. And, the “editorial” choices were made completely by NotebookLM. This made the Audio Overview feature more of a technology demo than a useful tool.

Customizing Your AI Podcast

To create your podcast, first add your “sources.” Sources can be just about anything: a book, a scientific research paper, a batch of articles, an audio recording, web pages, or several YouTube videos. Generally, you’ll want each notebook to have a focus on a topic. This will help NotebookLM create better answers and content. Often, I find a single source works best.

Once you have your source(s) in your notebook, you’ll see the Audio Overview section with a “Generate” button. The big change that Google made to Audio Overviews is adding the “Customize” button that lets the user focus them in three ways.

While customizing the Audio Overview is optional, you’ll almost certainly want to use it. When you click it, you see that now you have three options for steering the content of the podcast.

Source Customization in NotebookLM Podcasts

For my first experiment, I uploaded my book Brainfluence as the sole source in a notebook. The book runs 286 pages, and has 14 major sections on applying behavioral science to topics like imagery, copywriting, non-profits, etc. Then, I prompted it to focus specifically on the section about pricing and pricing psychology.

I was quite surprised by the results. Not only did the podcast focus on pricing, it ran a full 25 minutes. That’s close to the length of my own typical podcast episode, and longer than past examples of Audio Overviews. Here’s what it sounded like:

Here’s the unusual bit: NotebookLM decided to do the podcast with a “consumer protection” emphasis, i.e., “Here’s how to avoid being tricked by marketers and their clever pricing tactics.” That’s a perfectly valid approach, and over the years I’ve recorded podcasts with human hosts who took a similar tack. Still, the book was aimed at marketers, so NotebookLM’s approach was unexpected. (Note: in these videos, the podcast host image was generated with Ideogram.ai and the subtitled video by Veed.io.)

Source and Audience Customization in NotebookLM

After the unexpected consumer focus of the first overview, I repeated the first prompt but added they should “act as savvy marketers” creating a podcast “for an audience of marketers who want to convert more customers.” I also added the suggestion that it limit the length to five minutes.

The content was in keeping with the customization:

The new podcast clearly responded to the “act as savvy marketers” prompt, as the male host begins by saying they talk a lot about marketing on the show. He then introduces his co-host as a “true expert” in the field. And, the content was clearly directed at an audience of marketers.

The podcast ran eight minutes long. As far as I can tell, at the moment, the customize feature ignores length instructions.

Audience and Emphasis Customization in NotebookLM

My third experiment skipped the source limitation. Instead, I prompted NotebookLM to enthusiastically promote the entire book to an audience of marketers. The podcast it generated was entirely different than the first two:

While I couldn’t detect a change in enthusiasm on the part of the hosts – they usually seem enthusiastic about every topic – the content does indeed sound like they want to promote the book to the intended audience.

How Will YOU Customize NotebookLM AI Podcasts?

The ability to direct the hosts of the NotebookLM podcasts opens up plenty of new use cases. They could discuss your latest product for an audience of the specific customers you hope to attract. They could skim a book or a batch of articles and give you only the topical content you want. They could extract interesting content from audio recordings or videos that you don’t have time to watch. Let me know what YOUR creative uses are!