NotebookLM's Audio Overview feature rudely discovers its wife never existed The demise of HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey remains a haunting cinema moment nearly six decades on for the questions it raises about consciousness,

It’s a sad, funny, and often unnerving listen, especially when the male presenter talks about phoning his wife after learning that he’s only an AI, to find that she didn’t exist and the number he was phoning wasn’t even real. There are shades of a Black Mirror episode to the whole thing!

A little-known AI notebook tool from Google is going viral for its Audio Overviews that mimic the speech cadence of podcasters. Here’s how to try it out.

A Google research tool called NotebookLM has been going viral thanks to a feature that transforms text documents into lively podcast-style conversations. Why it matters: Businesses see AI's future in its power to streamline work processes — but the public keeps getting hooked by its ability to impersonate humans.

According to Google, NotebookLM is powered by the tech giant's most capable model, Gemini 1.5 Pro, making it a powerful personalised AI research assistant. Recently, the tool's prowess was in the spotlight when an audio clip posted to X, showcasing AI hosts speaking in natural, even humorous tones, went viral.

Google isn't the only firm to be playing around with AI-powered bots that sound like humans. OpenAI is also in the market with its own voice-assistant to match the one in the movie Her. That was human-to-bot contact, but no less odd for it.

NotebookLM from Google can use AI to summarize and query multiple documents on one topic—and you can even turn your notes into Audio Overviews, customized podcasts.

With this Google tool, you can now listen to a show about any topic you could possibly imagine. You won’t believe your ears.