Google’s Illuminate AI: A New Way to Create Your Own AI-Generated Podcasts

Image by Author | Ideogram

Generative AI is everywhere, and many things we could only imagine previously have become reality. For example, we can talk with a computer, quickly identify images, and generate podcasts without speaking even one word.

One of the recent developments by the Google team that is taking over the world is NotebookLM. By passing out your personal text or website link, NotebookLM can converse seamlessly with those files. But that’s not why NotebookLM is viral. NotebookLM's most viral AI feature is its ability to produce a two-person podcast from a text. The podcast recording feels so natural that people might not realize that the conversation is generated with AI.

Google has published another Generative AI that only solely focuses on generating podcasts called illuminate. This article will explore various aspects of Illuminate that you should know.

Let’s get into it!
 

Google Illuminate

 
As mentioned above, Illuminate is a Google project that develops Generative AI tools for podcast production. Google Teams markets the product, allowing you to transform a research paper into an AI-generated audio summary.

It’s intended for simple usage, similar to how NotebookLM can produce podcasts with a button. By inputting the file into Illuminate, the tool will create a podcast to explain the details of our document.

The overall Illuminate product page is shown in the image below.
 

 

Illuminate stands out because the Google Gemini AI model has longer context windows that could extend up to 2 million tokens. With the longer context, Illuminate can efficiently process the whole document and produce the podcast with a natural conversation sound.

Historically, the Illuminate product started in the Google 20% Project. Illuminate was envisioned as a knowledge factory that could accept any data format and process it into the highest-quality podcast output.

However, as shown in the image above, Illuminate is still experimental. The product could undergo many changes throughout the process and might have additional features outside of podcast generation, such as different output styles, like videos.

To use the Google Illuminate product, you only need to sign up with your Google account and Log In to use the Illuminate service. However, you might not get access directly because the service has limited access, and many users are on the waiting list.

You can start generating the podcast by uploading your documents or the website link if you get access. It’s also possible to search for books or research papers from the limited libraries provided by Illumination.

Illuminate allows the user to have more detailed control of the output for podcast generation, including the podcast length, voice tone, and many other things. You can provide a prompt that is suitable for your intended output.

Moreover, Illuminate will have a feature that allows the user to choose host and guest voice types. This feature will give much more versatility to the output result, seemingly different than an essential generated AI podcast.

Another feature of Illuminate is that it shows the transcript from the podcast it generated. Try selecting one of the examples on the Illuminate page, and you can see the feature like the image below.
 

 

You can also ask questions about the documents you have uploaded. Pressing the hand button will pop up the Q&A section, where you can ask questions.
 

 
The result will be a text output like a chat conversation, but you can turn the text into a podcast answer in the host style by pressing the button beside the output.

Lastly, you can check the My Library section to see all the podcasts you have generated previously.

If you have any criticisms or suggestions for the Google team regarding the Illuminate product, you can always visit the feedback section.
 

 

Conclusion

 
Illuminate is a Google product that can generate podcasts with AI from document files such as research papers with a simple button push. The product is still experimental, so the features could evolve beyond simple podcast generation. Nevertheless, Illuminate's AI-generated podcast output feels natural because we can think that two actual persons spoke it.

I hope it has helped!
 
 

Cornellius Yudha Wijaya is a data science assistant manager and data writer. While working full-time at Allianz Indonesia, he loves to share Python and data tips via social media and writing media. Cornellius writes on a variety of AI and machine learning topics.