People have discovered a new level of scary when it comes to AI technology, as Google have a hidden feature that allows you to turn any text into an eerily real podcast recording.
There have been many justifiable fears about AI since it's explosion over the past few years, and those worries are only growing as the technology continues to expand and improve.
We've seen AI like ChatGPT struggle with complex ethical dilemmas and hilariously talk to itself, but it's hard to ignore how much more realistic and complex the systems are becoming, especially in their more human-like forms.
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Perhaps no form of AI has shown this better - or perhaps scarier - than Google's NotebookLM, which as a hidden feature that allows its users to turn any inputted text into a fully fledged podcast.
While you might think that text-to-speech AI is nothing new, this tech is completely different. Instead of simply reading out the text word-for-word, the podcast instead features a two-person discussion about the text, and has a number of familiar inflections and turns of phrases that you'd expect to hear in the format.
Many have described it as the most terrifying advancement in the AI space so far, and it's hard not to think otherwise when presented with examples.
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One experiment by ZDNet is particularly illuminating, as they point out the key aspects that you'll want to notice when listening to the audio.
You'll want to pay attention to the way that the two AI voices are speaking, what colloquialisms they use, how organic their conversation sounds, and their comprehension of the article itself - especially within the nuances.
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It really is both fascinating and terrifying that this could really be just any podcast out there and it'd be difficult to immediately tell if you didn't know it was AI in the first place.
Another post on the r/artificialintelligence subreddit shows very similar results with many of the same terrifying aspects that are still genuinely hard to believe. The post states that "it creates an extremely realistic and interesting podcast between two people. Honestly, I would listen to it for fun, and I don't think it sounds AI-Generated."
The comments underneath the post certainly seem to agree too, as one user points out that "it's almost too canny" whereas another declares that they "couldn't believe how high quality and interesting the output was," continuing to state that they'd love to see how it coped with things like a car owner's manual, a poem, or a complete history of war in 1812.
Some aren't as convinced that it's the future though, as the comments for the YouTube version of the podcast are very much split.
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"Great, more bland nontent trash for me to sift through," argues one commenter, and another puts forward that "AI podcasts are soooo cringe."
There are definitely limitations in terms of what the podcasts actually offer on top of the original text, but the tech is certainly like nothing we've ever seen before and will likely only continue to expand.