- Gemini ‘Audio Overview’ will read an AI-generated PDF summary to you
- Sound clips, between 2-10 mins long, will be saved in Drive
- Google regularly adds more PDF power via Gemini
Google is making it even easier for you to digest the content of that PDF you’ve been putting off reading with new AI-powered audio overviews.
Rather than simply reading the entire content of the PDF to you, Gemini will provide conversational, podcast-style audio summaries of long, text-heavy documents, such as contracts.
For now, it’s being rolled out across web versions of the PDF viewer in Google Drive – it’s unclear whether this will also come to app version.
Google adds new PDF audio summaries
A new ‘Audio Overview’ button appears in the top bar for eligible accounts, which prompts the Gemini side panel to open. Gemini then needs to generate the summary before it can be read via the ‘Play’ button.
As this can take a few minutes, users can receive an email notification when the file is ready. Audio files, generally between two and 10 minutes long, are also saved inside a new ‘Audio overviews’ folder in Google Drive – which can then be accessed on 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 isn’t just limited to English summaries, but it can also only digest English-language PDFs.
Google Workspace Business Standard/Plus and Enterprise Standard/Plus will get the feature on the commercial front. The Google One AI Pro/Ultra plan, AI Ultra for Business and AI Pro for Education bundles will also being Audio Overviews to PDFs.
More broadly, PDFs have clearly been a big focus area for Google. In August, Gemini gained access to a 1M token context window for deciphering even bigger PDFs. Just before that in June, Google added summary cards to the Gemini sidebar to show relevant information and suggest next steps.
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