Google recently shipped an update to its Illuminate experiment with a couple of new features that drastically changed how it can be used. Some of these features have been previously discovered, such as the possibility to choose different hosts for degenerated podcasts between predefined voice options.
After adding a certain source, users can select a host and a guest, then provide a text prompt to specify how the context from the source should be handled. This is the same feature available in NotebookLM Audio Overviews, with the difference that here, you can select different voices, while on NotebookLM they are always standard so far.
One extra addition is the ability to add any URL as a source. For instance, you can take a blog post from a publicly available website and use it as a context. Previously, users could only browse through a limited selection of topics from research sources.
Another enhancement is that the generated audio can now be played alongside its transcript, allowing users to run a player and view the content in text form simultaneously. Additionally, there is a small raised hand button that opens a Q&A chat, where you can ask questions to podcast hosts or choose from predefined suggestions, which is a neat feature.
This update makes it much easier to generate a podcast on any topic quickly. The podcast can also be shared through a public link, making this project or experiment very powerful. Give it a try! 🔥
