NotebookLlama offers open podcast feature from Meta

An AI tool transforming text into audio with limitations.
Despite past setbacks and criticism, Meta is investing heavily in Llama, forecasting revenues of up to $3 billion by 2025.

Meta has launched NotebookLlama, an ‘open’ version of Google’s NotebookLM generate-a-podcast tool, but using Meta’s Llama AI models. NotebookLlama processes uploaded text files, such as PDFs or blog posts, creating a podcast-style summary with dramatisation and interruptions, followed by conversion to speech through open text-to-speech models. However, early feedback highlights a robotic, less natural sound, with voices sometimes overlapping awkwardly.

Meta’s researchers acknowledge the audio limitations and suggest that quality could improve with better text-to-speech models. They also propose evolving the format to feature two AI agents debating topics rather than a single model handling the outline.

Despite various efforts to replicate NotebookLM’s podcast capabilities, all still struggle with AI ‘hallucinations,’ making the generated content prone to inaccuracies.