Google Drive Gets Popular AI-Powered Podcast-Style Overviews for PDFs

Google Drive is getting a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature. The Mountain View-based tech giant announced on Tuesday that it is adding AI-powered Audio Overviews to the saved PDF documents in the cloud storage platform. It will allow users to convert long and text-heavy files into conversational podcast-style audio summaries. This way, users can get an alternative method of going through the document. Notably, it is a paid feature which is introduced as part of the Gemini for Google Workspace suite.

Google Drive Gets AI-Powered Audio Overviews

In a blog post, the tech giant announced the new AI feature for Google Drive. The popularity of AI Overviews, or podcast-style audio conversations, started after the feature was released on NotebookLM last year. With this, users could convert their sources into an engaging discussion between two AI hosts. The later version of the feature also allows users to interrupt the discussion to ask questions, and the hosts answer them.

Afterwards, due to the popularity, the feature was also expanded to Gemini. Now, Workspace users will be able to convert their long and text-heavy PDFs into similar overviews. Announcing the feature, the company said, “This feature is powered by the same underlying technology as NotebookLM's popular Audio Overview feature.”

Google highlighted that currently, audio overviews can only be generated on the desktop version of Drive. Once a PDF is opened, a new waveform icon appears on the top navigation bar, tapping which prompts Gemini to generate the audio summary. It takes a few minutes to generate the overview, and once done, users will receive an email notification about it. Also, after generating the AI Overview, users can access it from the mobile apps as well.

There are some caveats as well. Currently, it only supports the English language. Additionally, the generated AI Overviews can only be between two to 10 minutes in length, which is determined by Gemini based on the quantity of the content. Despite it being a Workspace feature, Google has not added any admin controls for it.

Coming to availability, AI Overviews in Google Drive is currently available to Workspace's Business Standard and Plus subscribers, Enterprise Standard and Plus users, as well as Google AI Pro and Ultra users. Additionally, Google AI Ultra for Business and Google AI Pro for Education subscribers will also get access to the tool.