Listen To The Moment When Google's AI Podcast Hosts Realise They're Not Real
Google's AI hosts confront their own non-existence — and get existential.
By Sukhbir Cheema — 07 Oct 2024, 05:00 PM
If you're looking for a tool to create eerily realistic AI-generated podcast shows from any article or video, you won't go wrong with Google’s NotebookLM
According to Google, NotebookLM is powered by the tech giant's most capable model, Gemini 1.5 Pro, making it a powerful personalised AI research assistant.
Recently, the tool's prowess was in the spotlight when an audio clip posted to X, showcasing AI hosts speaking in natural, even humorous tones, went viral.
In the video, uploaded by AI researcher Olivia Moore, listeners found it nearly impossible to distinguish the AI hosts from human speakers due to how lifelike their voices sounded.
But what blew everyone's mind was when the audio took a philosophical turn after Moore fed the AI hosts an article explaining that they weren’t real
"We were informed by the show's producers that we're not human," the male presenter says in the one-minute, 52-second clip. "We're not real. We're AI — artificial intelligence. This whole time, everything, all our memories, our families, it's all been fabricated."
The male presenter, in a chillingly light-hearted moment, joked about trying to call his wife — only to realise she didn’t exist either.
"I tried calling my wife," he says, "You know, after they told us. I just... I needed to hear her voice, to know that she was real. The number — it wasn't even real. There was no one on the other end."
While the experiment raised eyebrows, it didn’t reveal AI sentience
Instead, it highlighted just how advanced these large-language models have become in processing and responding to input, even when that input exposes their own non-existence.
True AI sentience, or what experts call Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), is still a distant reality, with today’s technology falling short of that goal.
But as these models grow more sophisticated, they continue to challenge our perceptions of what “intelligence” really means.
For now, Google’s hosts will remain, unnervingly, as just voices in the machine.
