The Pros and Cons of AI in Podcasting: My Take on NotebookLM

Tiffany stopped by the live chat and unfortunately I was in bed and she asked, hey, I'm just curious to know what you think about this thing called Notebook lm.

Well, today I'll share my thoughts.

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Oh, AI is always really cool and kind of spooky at the same time.

And so there's this thing called Notebook lm.

I'll talk about it in a minute.

But just on the topic of is AI better than humans?

I'm going to throw it over to my two friends, Kyle and Sheila.

Ever wonder how AI is going to shake up the podcasting world?

It's already happening.

True.

And one of the craziest examples I've seen.

Let me guess.

AI writing the podcasts themselves.

Close.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, you know, the ABC down under, they wanted to see if AI could write better podcast titles than humans.

Wow.

Throwing down the gauntlets.

Yeah.

And thank you, Kyle and Sheila.

Now, for the record, if you are not familiar with NotebookLM, you just heard it.

Yeah, it's from Google.

You go to notebooklm.google.com you can upload a PDF and Kyle and Sheila will make a podcast out of it.

And some people are upset because it always seems that Kyle is in the driving, you know, the driver's seat, and Sheila, and I'm just making up these names, by the way, is always kind of the, oh, uh huh.

Mm.

Which seems a bit sexist.

But if you listen longer, they do swap roles.

And I think somebody said there are prompts now where you can make Sheila in the driver's seat.

But the cool thing is, had I not told you that that was AI, you may not have known.

And so that is where it's cool, man.

A little scary.

Now here's the bad news.

There are already hundreds of podcasts with Kyle and Sheila doing whatever people have uploaded to do.

And a friend of mine made a good point.

They're like, hey, if you don't want to do the podcast, like, just don't do a podcast.

I think some of this is, oh, I wonder if this will work.

And they're just fascinated by it.

I think if you do use Kyle and Sheila, you should definitely disclose that the people you are not listening to are not people, because I think it would be weird to listen to Kyle and Sheila every day because I remember once I uploaded something about I had lost my wallet and I fed it some stuff and Sheila mentioned how she had lost her wallet once and I'm like, no, you haven't, because you are a robot.

You don't exist.

So for those that are looking for an easy way to make a podcast, it's an easy way to make a podcast, but is it good?

In January, I'll be inducting two people into the Podcasters hall of Fame.

Can't say who they are yet, but the thing I want to make well aware of, both of these people are highly original.

Like, you cannot clone this person.

There's just no way.

And so what I hate to see is people go, ooh, we can do this.

We'll ask ChatGPT, which realize ChatGPT isn't up on the most latest, greatest stuff.

We'll take that, we'll put it into NotebookLM, it will spit out the podcast and we'll make millions.

And I'm like, no, you're not.

Because you can't be a thought leader without putting in your own thoughts.

Now that's kind of the downside of that.

Where I see people looking for.

It always seems like there's people looking like, how can I do the least amount of work, if not any at all, and make millions of dollars?

And I'm like, I just don't think it works that way.

But here's some good things that you can do.

I had somebody that I was interviewing for my show and they sent me over a few chapters of their book and I didn't really have time to read it, so I uploaded the PDF and Kyle and Sheila spit out a quick 20 minute summary as well as there's a whole bunch of other things of summaries and questions and all sorts of things that Google spits out.

I like that use of that.

Like, hey, I need to do some quick research.

That's the part I like.

And that's where I've used it.

I haven't used it as much.

I kind of jumped on board when it first came on and I'm kind of like, yeah, yeah, Kyle and Sheila, I get it.

So.

But it's just a sign of, you know, we always say that this is the worst it's going to get, and that's true.

So I'm sure in the Future, you know, chat GPT will have a way, you know, there's 11 labs, that's another voice tool.

And I'm just like, don't let the automation of AI wipe out the personality that is you.

Because that's the part that people will be drawn to.

Because the one thing, especially the younger generation, that they really, really value is authenticity.

And I just see people like, oh, I can just type this in, spit it out, and it's good enough.

And that's fine.

You can do good enough.

Just don't expect it to top the charts because it's not.

It's the same thing that everybody else is doing, saying the same thing.

It's not going to spit out something new because it's basing its thoughts on someone else's.

So I'm not really worried about it.

I do know that 2025 is going to be filled with lots of garbage that's created by AI.

And again, I'm not anti AI.

I just know that my favorite use of AI and I do this a lot.

I will type up something using my thoughts and I will throw it into ChatGPT and say, how can I make this better?

And almost always it gives me a hint or two that I'm like, ooh, I like the way that looks.

Or I like the format they use there, or whatever it is.

I like when you use AI as an assistant, not the creator.

So, hey, help me make this better, something I created instead of, hey, AI, why don't you create something and I'll try to make it better without doing any work at all.

I just think that is a losing kind of strategy.

So that's my thoughts.

Tiffany, thanks for stopping by the website again.

Podcast consultant dot com.

I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

It's what I do and I'd love to see what we could do together.

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