Want to Simplify How You Digest Meaty Topics? Create a Personal AI Podcast

Google Audio Overview tool lets you generate engaging, human-sounding AI hosts

Edward C. Baig,

AARP

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Published June 23, 2026

a man with headphones and a smartphone with an audio wave and a play icons in the background

If you want to dive into a topic, Google’s Audio Overview can produce an appealing podcast-style discussion, based on the prompts and sources you feed it.

AARP (Getty Images)

Key takeaways

Google Audio Overview turns dense documents, PDFs and search results into dynamic, podcast-style audio conversations.
You can control the style, length, language and focus via the Deep Dive, Brief, Critique and Debate options.
The feature is available in NotebookLM and Gemini tools; outputs may include inaccuracies or audio glitches.

AARP members and readers are invited to submit pressing technology questions they’d like me to tackle in my Tech Guru column, including issues around devices, security, social media and how all the puzzle pieces fit together. 

This week’s column examines an emerging option in the world of podcasts.

I’ve heard that through artificial intelligence, I can generate a podcast-style discussion to absorb critical information, hands-free, while commuting, working out or doing chores. Can you explain how?

There’s no shortage of podcasts out there on almost any subject you can think of, be it health, history, politics, sports, travel, you name it.

But if you want to dive into a topic that is more personal to you, at least in the moment — planning a family vacation to Japan, gauging whether you can afford to retire based on your age and investments, nurturing the perfect garden in your local climate — a feature from Google called Audio Overview can produce an appealing podcast-style discussion on the subject, based on the prompts and sources you feed it.

Audio Overview creates two AI-generated hosts: one, a remarkably human-sounding female voice; the other, an equally authentic-sounding male counterpart. The engaging banter between the pair sounds so real, even down to humorous touches, that if bystanders were not paying close attention, they might mistake it for a public radio show.

What these make-believe AI hosts talk about incorporates source material from PDFs, transcripts, Google Docs, Google Slides and web links, and it doesn’t come across as dry.

Google lets you further fine-tune a format for your faux podcast. You can ask for a Deep Dive that is meant to be a lively conversation between the two hosts; a Brief, or bite-sized overview; a Critique, which is an expert review of your sources, complete with constructive feedback; or a Debate, in which the two hosts each illuminate different perspectives.

You can also choose the rough length of the Audio Overview, adjust the playback speed as you listen and, in some cases, select a language other than English.

Ask a Tech Guru

Google also suggests different ways to direct the AI discussion. You can have it focus on a specific source, character or audience: for example, explaining biology to people over 50.

Audio Overviews emerged as an experimental feature from Google’s Search Labs. They became available in an online, AI-based research tool called NotebookLM, which Google says is still the most popular place to use it. You can also access Audio Overview within the Canvas and Deep Research tools inside the Google Gemini AI app. And while generating an Audio Overview is free, usage limits apply based on how often you use Gemini under the free and paid plans.

A sample prompt

I created an Audio Overview based on the following instruction: “I do not have a green thumb. Anything but. If it is possible to kill a plant, I’m the person who can do it. That said, I appreciate beautiful plants and flowers. What would be an idiot-proof way to begin planting a garden in a modest-sized northern New Jersey backyard?”

AARP Audio · How to Garden in New Jersey

Since I didn’t have any source material to add to the query on my own, I had Google run a Fast Research search within NotebookLM on the topic, and imported 10 sources.

After about a dozen minutes, Google generated a 22-minute Deep Dive podcast, a sample of which you can listen to here.

As with any AI-generated output, Google cautions that the Audio Overview “may contain inaccuracies or audio glitches.”

Why create an Audio Overview in the first place?

Beyond the pleasure of diving deep into a hobby or passion, some people would rather listen to an engaging take on dense information than pore through mounds of text and other materials.

You can listen while multitasking or on the go, perhaps while commuting, walking the dog or working in the yard.

Audio Overviews may also help your school-age kids or grandkids prepare for an exam.

Meanwhile, if you are visually impaired or have other impairments that make it difficult, if not impossible, to read, listening may be your only option.

Look elsewhere, too, for AI-generated podcasts

While Google is out front with its Audio Overview feature, other companies are also tapping into this personal AI podcast space. Earlier this year, Adobe launched a Generate feature in Adobe Acrobat for certain paid subscribers that converts PDFs and other documents into podcast-like summaries.

Spotify recently announced plans to roll out a research preview feature called Studio by Spotify Labs, initially as a desktop app for premium Spotify subscribers.

The company gave this example of how you might use it: “Create a daily audio brief for my road trip through Italy. Walk me through my day using my calendar and bookings. Recommend a memorable dinner spot near where I’ll be. And end with a podcast recommendation I’d love for the drive.”

Bonus tip: Steer the algorithm on Instagram

Social media companies use complex algorithms to feed content based on what they think folks want to consume. Meta-owned Instagram is adding a feature to the app’s main Feed called Your Algorithm, which promises to give users more agency over what they see.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri discussed the reasoning in a post on Threads.

“Who you follow used to be a meaningful tool people had for shaping their own experience and as recommendations took over the main feed, that tool quietly stopped working,” he wrote. “The conversation with the system became one-sided. The system learns from what you tap, watch, and share, but you don’t really get to tell it what you want. I think this is part of what people feel when they feel uneasy about social media — not the content itself, but the sense that the experience is happening to them rather than being shaped by them.”

To access Your Algorithm, launch Instagram, tap your Profile at the bottom right corner of the app, and the three horizontal lines at the upper right to access Settings and activity. Scroll down to Content preferences | Your algorithm. It surfaces buttons for topic areas based on your activity across Instagram and Threads that it thinks you are interested in. Tap the +Add button under What you want to see more of if that’s the case, or a similar button under What you want to see less of.

Mosseri indicated that Instagram is also working on giving users more control over people, different moods or vibes, and content types.

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The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.

Edward C. Baig covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune. He is the author of Macs for Dummies and coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies. Follow him on LinkedIn, Threads and X (formerly known as Twitter).                   