Summary
- Google’s latest Search Labs experiment, Daily Listen, will use your Discover feed interactions to create a personalized podcast of sorts running down the day’s news.
- The feature will reside at the top of your feed, beneath the search bar in the Google app or the integrated Discover feed on the Pixel Launcher.
- The UI is reminiscent of other podcast players, with options to play, pause, and scrub the audio, and it includes a text-based transcript.
Google’s NotebookLM project can turn your homework into a podcast that you can even interact with, so the concept of morphing text into a natural, audible conversation doesn’t seem so much like science fiction anymore. Now, the company’s latest Search Labs experiment is trying a similar trick with your Discover feed.
Google today announced a new Daily Listen experiment coming to the Labs section of the Google app for Android and iOS (via 9to5Google). The feature will use what it knows about your interests from your Discover feed interactions to create a personalized podcast of sorts running down the day’s news, and the episode should be about five minutes long.
Daily Listen will live at the top of your feed
Right underneath the search bar in the Google app or the integrated Discover feed on the Pixel Launcher, there’s a set of quick-access shortcuts. Beneath this is a horizontally scrolling carousel of personalized widgets featuring sports scores and weather data. The new Daily Listen feature, once enabled, will reside within this carousel.
The UI itself is reminiscent of the podcast player in YouTube Music, with options to play, pause, and scrub the audio. You’ll also see sources for the information being spoken about, and a text-based transcript is included so you can follow along without cranking up the volume.
Once live, you’ll be able to enroll in the experiment by opening the Google app for Android or iOS, then tapping the Labs icon in the top-right corner (it looks like the type of conical flask you might find in a chemistry lab). After opting in, it will take another day before you receive your first Daily Listen. Right now, we’re only seeing NotebookLM, ImageFX, and Viola the Bird, along with a few others in the Labs page, but we expect the Daily Listen experiment to go live in the coming days.