- Gemini ‘Audio Overview’ will read you an AI-generated PDF summary
- Sound clips, between 2 and 10 minutes long, will be saved to Drive.
- Google regularly adds more PDF power through Gemini
Google makes it even easier for you to digest the content of that PDF you’ve been putting off reading with new AI-powered audio summaries.
Instead of simply reading the entire PDF content to you, Gemini will provide you with conversational, podcast-style audio summaries of long, text-heavy documents, such as contracts.
For now, it is rolling out to web versions of the PDF viewer in Google Drive; It’s unclear if this will also make it to the app version.
Google adds new PDF audio summaries
A new “Audio Overview” button appears in the top bar for eligible accounts, prompting you to open the Gemini side panel. Gemini then needs to generate the summary before it can be read using the “Play” button.
Since this may take a few minutes, users can receive an email notification when the file is ready. The audio files, typically between two and 10 minutes in length, are also saved within a new ‘Audio Summary’ folder in Google Drive, which can then be accessed from any device, including the app.
“This feature is powered by the same underlying technology as NotebookLM’s popular audio overview feature,” Google added.
For now, the feature is not only limited to English summaries, but can also digest English PDF files.
Google Workspace Business Standard/Plus and Enterprise Standard/Plus will get the feature on the business front. The Google One AI Pro/Ultra plan, AI Ultra for Business and AI Pro for Education packages will also include audio summaries in PDF files.
More generally, PDFs have clearly been an area of great focus for Google. In August, Gemini gained access to a 1 million token contextual window to decrypt even larger PDF files. Just before that, in June, Google added summary cards to the Gemini sidebar to display relevant information and suggest next steps.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
