Google knows a lot about you and your interests, and it uses this information to capture more of your time and attention. For example, a new Search Labs experiment called Daily Listening can turn your Discover feed into a professional podcast. Google Discover is a curated feed on mobile devices filled with articles and videos that the company’s algorithms believe are relevant to your interests based on your searches and other activities. As 9to5Google notes, this feature is similar to the one Google released for NotebookLM last year. The NotebookLM tool can turn the materials you provide it into a podcast with two hosts who even joke around as if they were real people.
Daily Listen can create a podcast episode of about 5 minutes that you can listen to to get an overview of the latest news on topics you are usually interested in. If you want to try this feature, you need to turn on Search Labs by clicking on the flask icon in the top left corner of the Google app. You will then be able to find the daily listening card under the search bar in the Google app on Android and iOS. Click on it to generate the podcast, which will open a screen with a text transcription and audio controls.
You can clearly see where each part of the podcast begins and ends in the audio script, and you can pause, stop, rewind, and fast forward at any time. You can also raise or lower your thumb up or down to send Google your feedback. If you scroll down, you’ll see several related stories grouped by podcast section in case you need more information.
According to 9to5Google, the experimental feature is launching today in the US, although it may take some time to start seeing the ability to generate a podcast. It is not yet clear whether Google plans to roll out the feature in other regions, and there is no guarantee that it will be widely adopted.
