I’ve caught a glimpse of how AI will change the world, and it fills me with both fear and amazement.
The source of my dismay is Google NotebookLM. NotebookLM takes an article, blog post, or web page and, with just one click, produces an audio file of two people talking about it that sounds so natural and realistic you wouldn’t believe you weren’t listening to two real people talking. They speak passionately and authoritatively about the subject, sounding engaged and interested, and riffing off of each other in such a natural way that it takes your breath away. There are even the little sniffles, slight mispronunciations, insults, and little giggles that make it all sound utterly human.
This is what happened. In my spare time I write a blog about Tai Chi called the Tai Chi NotebookSo, after hearing about NotebookLM (the ‘notebook’ in the name is purely coincidental), I thought I’d throw one of my Tai Chi articles at it, just to see what it did.
The AI had taken my article and explained the key concepts through the conversational “presenters.” It had even expanded on it in new and interesting directions that I hadn’t thought of, drawing analogies between what I was saying and other areas of life. The presenters had even given practical examples of what I was talking about, and these examples weren’t taken from my article, but from their broader knowledge of the subject. And most importantly, it didn’t find anything wrong with it.
See what you think:
The Beginning of the AI Era
Of course, we’re still only at the beginning of the new AI era, with major players like ChatGPT, Gemini, and most recently Apple Intelligence just getting started. NotebookLM doesn’t have many options right now – you can speed up or slow down playback and that’s it – but it won’t be long before you’ll be able to choose the type of presenter you want, their accent, their area of expertise, their political leanings, their personality, and, once we’re using AI-generated video as standard, what they look like. As I wrote recently, AI is already being used in movies , and we can imagine a world where a movie is generated on the fly, with the plot changing to suit your whims.
Yes, this may sound scary to some, but movies are already flights of fancy that exist in the realm of the imagination. It’s when AI invades the real world that I get most worried. I have a friend whose daughter is applying to college right now, and he tells me that many institutions are saying they’re not requiring personal statements anymore because so many have been manipulated with AI that they don’t make much sense.
All of which brings me back to NotebookLM. It can already produce a fantastic podcast of one of my articles at the touch of a button, and it feels like we’re on the cusp of a sea change in the way media is produced. I’m not sure I know what’s real anymore, and that’s something I’m just going to have to get used to.