AI-Made Podcasts
There’s a new feature on NotebookLM from Google, and its completely free. It allows you to take any document or web page and turn it into a lively entertaining podcast. For example, simply by pointing it at the previous article about getting ChatGPT to think", it came up with this podcast, have a listen!
Converting content into a podcast could be a way to add a new channel to your marketing strategy and reach new prospects. Alternatively, you could use it as a way to convert reports or papers into a podcast that you could listen to in the car.
If the idea is appealing, be careful before you start relying on an experimental Google service as part of your workflow. Google have a habit of suddenly pulling experimental products or changing them with no notice. Also, with NotebookLM you don’t have fine control over the style of the podcast. You may want to cut some bits out or refine the way some points were handled.
To overcome these issues, you can get more controlled results, though it involves extra steps and some paid services. The first step is to use your favourite LLM (for example ChatGPT or Claude 3.5 Sonnet) and prompt it to produce the podcast script. A suitable prompt would be something like:
Produce an entertaining podcast where two lively presenters, Jim and Sally, discuss the article below. The presenters should make the topics covered interesting and accessible to a non-technical audience of adults. They are excited about the content and their enthusiasm is infectious. They work well as a team and occasionally interrupt each other. The script should be in a form suitable for Elevenlabs so you should clarify emotion and pace. For example:
[Voice 1: cheerful]
Welcome, listeners! I'm Jim, and I'm here with my co-host Sally.
[Voice 2: enthusiastic]
Hi, good to be here.
[Voice 1: excited]
I'm keen to dive into today's topic, can ChatGPT think?
...
<start of article>
Put your content here
Once you have done this you will get a script which you should review and adjust as needed. If there are major problems such as being too short or having the wrong tone, go back and adjust your prompt. Once you are satisfied with the script, you will need a paid account on ElevenLabs. Multiple voices are available through the Creator tier which at the time of writing is USD $22 per month. You will need to become familiar with ElevenLabs Projects to complete this step and turn the script into audio.