Over the weekend I noticed a post from a friend of mine over on LinkedIn about a trial version of NotebookLM, an AI tool that is being developed by GoogleAI. The video that he posted was of two people talking about his LinkedIn profile in a conversational manner. Like a podcast. I decided to try it out on my own LinkedIn profile and the results were... well strange is a good word for it. Nice try, but it was weird and not something I could use. So I thought, why not give the AI this blog instead and see what it came up with. That result is the video above. I haven't edited anything.
As you probably know, my relationship with AI is complicated. I am diametrically opposed to AI art and the use of artists works to train those platforms. Especially without permission. That is so obviously wrong and illegal and horrible that I can't imagine why anyone would support that activity. On the other hand AI tools that help organize, illuminate, and enhance our work flow are powerful and entrenched in ways that can't be stopped. I watch every day my Wife use ChatGPT to help her build presentations and outlines based on her own work and see how much of a time saver those tools can be. And I think back to all the hours and hours I used to spend building advertising presentations, and how much easier those would be today.
As far as the above video, I thought it was worth sharing. There are parts of this that are insanely weird. And the AI has a challenging time saying Eve or even the name of this blog. It also stumbles over my own name and says it in a wide variety of ways. But all in all, at this early stage, this is insane.
If you are interested the SpacePope has used the same tool to create a Deep Dive podcast into the Mars Rover Wheels project he worked on for JPL over here. So you can get another example of this technology at work.
It is an interesting time we are being herded into. Some bad, some weird. As this technology starts to weave its way into our lives it is important to keep up with the changes, but be weary of the reach and exploitative nature of some of the roads being taken.