For commenters who didn't read the text below the audio, I'll repost it here:
This was created by Google’s NotebookLM by a subscriber who was bored on the Slack channel this morning. All he did, as far as I’m aware, was point NotebookLM to the Substack url and click “go.”
It’s absurd.
And if Google didn’t pay NPR for using their Fresh Air, Markteplace, and All Things Considered material to train this against, I hope NPR has a great lawsuit warmed up.
Ok, ELI5, cuz I don't follow AI news so much: Some dude used Google's NotebookLM to generate this whole podcast episode in one click? He didn't write a script for it and/or tell it which NPR voices/shows/styles to use? He just told NLM to create a podcast episode reviewing [HWFO URL], and this is what it generated?
The AI seems to have accurately assessed your writing as much as the simpering affect of NPR talking heads. The only thing more cringe than the faux "banter" was the repeated use of plural pronouns for the author who I believe is one male person.
The only thing really missing was the condescension and scorn "real" NPR hosts would heap upon you if they ever broadcast an assessment of your work.
It doesn't appear to. After you have the AI digest the text material there is literally one button that will generate the audio, and it doesn't appear to have any settings. The cool thing is that it also provides a LLM-like chat interface you can use to query about the subject material. I'm not sure if you've been given the link to the notebook; if you haven't, you're missing out on an analysis of your own work which might or might not be valuable to you.
Huh, Talk AI more fair and accurate than Human Talk. What a world. Funniest tihng I've listened to all year. They even have the sense to diss "common sense'' which is so uncommon.
Oh my god that's amazing. If you hadn't said it was AI, I'd never have known, short of the fact there wasn't the sound of heads exploding about thirty seconds in. :D
I will put on my pedant hat for a moment though and point out that Kai Ryssdal is not an NPR employee. He works for American Public Media (APM), whose shows air on many public radio stations. A distinction without a difference? Yes, most likely.
Waitaminute...the entire 8 minutes of audio was AI generated!?? How? I get that NotebookLM was involved, but does that have audio generation in its capabilities?
I write a small special-interest blog about politics in my Detroit area suburb. I fed my blog's URL to it and it generated some very interesting insights about the stuff I've written over the past decade or so. It's working on generating the fake radio talk show right now.
If something is free OTA, is there the expectation of payment? I'm just trying to think through the chain of events here. DMCA issues? Which would be kind of amusing given how much google takes down on their various platforms for "DMCA" requests.
While I completely agree that they're biased, I'm not sure we had a right to expect anything else. Almost the entirety of the media is a left wing propaganda arm of the government/Democratic Party. There is precious little balance in journalism and none in commentary. I have used both Ground News and Straight Arrow News when looking for balanced news coverage. As far as pulling the plug on the funding, I am practically certain that NPR and PBS barely represent a rounding error of the federal budget. If we're going to attack funding because of political bias, there are much bigger, more important fish to fry.
The problem isn't so much with the dollars wasted on NPR and PBS, it's in the damage caused by the propaganda they spread. We would be better off if ten times their budget was simply burned rather than having them continue to brainwash the citizenry.
I've explained this many times on Twitter, but here I go again. These programs are not funded by tax dollars. They are funded by program acquisition budgets that are disbursed to qualified station by the feds. The stations decide what they want to air and what they need to buy. Take it up with your local station if you have a beef. There is no such thing as an NPR network. NPR only produces programming which stations have the option to buy.
Indirectly. The point I'm repeatedly having to make is that the stations decide. The money comes from the CPB in the form of a program acquisition grant. Fed dollars, but not funneled directly to NPR. Nobody has to buy NPR programs. They can spend the money on producing their own local news. But guess what? Stations are lazy and all their listeners demand All Things Considered. I worked in public radio for 25 years - I know how the scam works.
The amount of government funding isn't the issue. Not so long ago, citizens of this great nation could trust media journalists to provide unbiased non-partisan news reporting based on the facts and data of the situation, with an understanding that we would perform our own analysis and draw our own conclusions. NPR is an editorial organization masquerading as investigative journalists, it constantly co-mingles fact or data with opinion, and often fails to include accurate or correct data in their "reporting". All of this is a betrayal of the trust in journalistic integrity that we as citizens used to have.
For commenters who didn't read the text below the audio, I'll repost it here:
This was created by Google’s NotebookLM by a subscriber who was bored on the Slack channel this morning. All he did, as far as I’m aware, was point NotebookLM to the Substack url and click “go.”
It’s absurd.
And if Google didn’t pay NPR for using their Fresh Air, Markteplace, and All Things Considered material to train this against, I hope NPR has a great lawsuit warmed up.
Ok, ELI5, cuz I don't follow AI news so much: Some dude used Google's NotebookLM to generate this whole podcast episode in one click? He didn't write a script for it and/or tell it which NPR voices/shows/styles to use? He just told NLM to create a podcast episode reviewing [HWFO URL], and this is what it generated?
J. E., I literally posted https://hwfo.substack.com/ and clicked the generate button. This was the result.
How the hell? Why did it pick NPR? Is that the AI's platonic ideal of "podcast"?
Personally I'd have gone for Joe Rogan...
It just did it's thing, which sounded curiously like NPR. The guess is they used thousands of hours of NPR recordings as their training data.
Oooohhhh... That makes a lot more sense!
Wow, on multiple levels.
The AI seems to have accurately assessed your writing as much as the simpering affect of NPR talking heads. The only thing more cringe than the faux "banter" was the repeated use of plural pronouns for the author who I believe is one male person.
The only thing really missing was the condescension and scorn "real" NPR hosts would heap upon you if they ever broadcast an assessment of your work.
I'm not sure if the AI has a prompt tree which could be used to include that scorn. It would be interesting if it did, I'd like to hear the results.
It doesn't appear to. After you have the AI digest the text material there is literally one button that will generate the audio, and it doesn't appear to have any settings. The cool thing is that it also provides a LLM-like chat interface you can use to query about the subject material. I'm not sure if you've been given the link to the notebook; if you haven't, you're missing out on an analysis of your own work which might or might not be valuable to you.
Amazing how hard it is to tell whether or not this is real or AI.
Huh, Talk AI more fair and accurate than Human Talk. What a world. Funniest tihng I've listened to all year. They even have the sense to diss "common sense'' which is so uncommon.
Oh my god that's amazing. If you hadn't said it was AI, I'd never have known, short of the fact there wasn't the sound of heads exploding about thirty seconds in. :D
Fake AI NPR (absurd PMC/regime propaganda 95% of the time) claims that HWFO uses facts and logic, but is "cringe". lolololololol
The irony.
What a blast. I’m fairly amazed at the content and repartee. What an agreeable post cast to boot.
Impressive.
I will put on my pedant hat for a moment though and point out that Kai Ryssdal is not an NPR employee. He works for American Public Media (APM), whose shows air on many public radio stations. A distinction without a difference? Yes, most likely.
You are correct and the voice sounds nothing like Ryssdal.
It seems like they treated you about as fairly as one could hope NPR to treat you.
Sometimes you have to trust the machines more than the people. :)
I'd say it treated you far more fairly than the actual hosts would have. IMO. This was pretty nuts though.
Waitaminute...the entire 8 minutes of audio was AI generated!?? How? I get that NotebookLM was involved, but does that have audio generation in its capabilities?
Get on Slack and ask them, they made it in about two minutes. I don't even know how they made it.
*Wow*. Gobsmacked.
https://blog.google/technology/ai/notebooklm-audio-overviews/
I write a small special-interest blog about politics in my Detroit area suburb. I fed my blog's URL to it and it generated some very interesting insights about the stuff I've written over the past decade or so. It's working on generating the fake radio talk show right now.
If something is free OTA, is there the expectation of payment? I'm just trying to think through the chain of events here. DMCA issues? Which would be kind of amusing given how much google takes down on their various platforms for "DMCA" requests.
I would presume it's still got copyright? Maybe not. I don't pay much attention to NPR, honestly.
We should've pulled the plug on government funding of the obviously left-biased NPR long ago, it must stop.
I'm sorry Thomas. I deleted my comment almost immediately after seeing it was AI generated.
While I completely agree that they're biased, I'm not sure we had a right to expect anything else. Almost the entirety of the media is a left wing propaganda arm of the government/Democratic Party. There is precious little balance in journalism and none in commentary. I have used both Ground News and Straight Arrow News when looking for balanced news coverage. As far as pulling the plug on the funding, I am practically certain that NPR and PBS barely represent a rounding error of the federal budget. If we're going to attack funding because of political bias, there are much bigger, more important fish to fry.
The problem isn't so much with the dollars wasted on NPR and PBS, it's in the damage caused by the propaganda they spread. We would be better off if ten times their budget was simply burned rather than having them continue to brainwash the citizenry.
I've explained this many times on Twitter, but here I go again. These programs are not funded by tax dollars. They are funded by program acquisition budgets that are disbursed to qualified station by the feds. The stations decide what they want to air and what they need to buy. Take it up with your local station if you have a beef. There is no such thing as an NPR network. NPR only produces programming which stations have the option to buy.
I hope that was sarcasm.
"... funded by program acquisition budgets that are disbursed to qualified station by the feds."
NPR's own website shows "federal funding is essential and critical to NPR"
https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances
Indirectly. The point I'm repeatedly having to make is that the stations decide. The money comes from the CPB in the form of a program acquisition grant. Fed dollars, but not funneled directly to NPR. Nobody has to buy NPR programs. They can spend the money on producing their own local news. But guess what? Stations are lazy and all their listeners demand All Things Considered. I worked in public radio for 25 years - I know how the scam works.
The amount of government funding isn't the issue. Not so long ago, citizens of this great nation could trust media journalists to provide unbiased non-partisan news reporting based on the facts and data of the situation, with an understanding that we would perform our own analysis and draw our own conclusions. NPR is an editorial organization masquerading as investigative journalists, it constantly co-mingles fact or data with opinion, and often fails to include accurate or correct data in their "reporting". All of this is a betrayal of the trust in journalistic integrity that we as citizens used to have.
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