Google’s ‘Daily Listen’ AI generates customized mini podcasts

You already have your daily news briefing podcasts, but Google is taking things a step further by providing personalized AI-generated audio recaps of news based on your Search data.

On Wednesday, Google announced Daily Listen, an experiment in its AI-testing ground Search Labs. Daily Listen lives at the top of the homepage in the Google app on Android and iOS. By clicking on the feature, you get a 5-minute or less audio recap of topics you’re interested in, generated by AI.

If you’re familiar with Google’s Notebook LM tool that generates a customized podcast from an initial text prompt, Daily Listen is similar to this, except the “prompt” is data collected from Search and Discover, a news feed curated by topics you follow in the Google app. So it’s a combination of your browsing history and search interests manually set by the user.

Clicking into Daily Listen starts the mini podcast episode and provides a real-time transcript of the audio. Below that, you’ll find links to related stories and ways to explore topics more deeply.

Google has previously tested AI Search Overviews, which provide an AI-generated summary of your query at the top of the page, and Notebook LM, the custom podcast generator in Search Labs, before launching them to the public. Search Labs gives users a sneak peek at what Google will likely soon release to the masses. By opting into Daily Listen in Search Labs, you authorize Google to use your Search data and Discover preferences to generate the audio recap. 

But once AI Overviews were made public, it became a default feature in Google Search, and is cumbersome to opt out of. It’s likely Daily Overviews would go the same way if it gets a public launch. So users tired of seeing AI-generated features everywhere won’t like what’s coming. However, if this sounds cool to you, Daily Listen is available to test out by signing up for Search Labs and accessing the Google mobile app.