The Speechify text-to-speech app allows its over 50 million customers worldwide to transform any textual content, together with paperwork, articles, PDFs, and pictures into audio, with over 200 voices to select from. Now, the corporate is delving into a brand new sort of audio: AI-generated podcasts.
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Beginning as we speak, Speechify customers will be capable of flip any content material right into a “lecture-style” podcast. They’re going to additionally get entry to a slew of different AI-powered options, together with updates to AI Summaries and AI-generated quizzes and a brand new AI recap function, and maybe the largest, AI podcasts.
Maintain studying to learn the way the brand new AI podcast function works and the way it compares to viral instruments resembling Google’s NotebookLM Audio Overviews AI podcast function or ElevenLabs’ AI podcast option.
Who’s Speechify for?
Speechify is geared towards individuals who both have a studying obstacle or simply desire voice content material. The brand new releases are positioned as examine aids and back-to-school instruments for college kids.
How does the AI-powered podcast work?
On the Speechify platform, you’ve all the time been in a position to add your personal supplies for it to learn them out loud for you. Now, these supplies can be utilized to create a podcast. One function that differentiates it from rivals like NotebookLM is that on the Speechify platform, you’ll be able to select the model of “present” that you simply wish to take heed to, with choices together with an ordinary podcast, debate, late-night with notes of comedy, and lecture.
As an alternative of importing your personal textual content, you can too enter a textual content immediate of a subject you are occupied with, and Speechify will generate a podcast about it for you, one other function that units it aside from NotebookLM. Speechify doesn’t delineate what supply materials it makes use of to generate a podcast from scratch, however informed me that this function is powered by its proprietary giant language mannequin (LLM), which is comprised of open and closed supply fashions. The corporate says it runs fixed evaluations to make it higher, however because it pulls from the online and the podcast would not embody citations, it is sensible to verify any statements or claims, particularly when you’re conducting analysis for varsity.
The way it labored for me (and methods to entry)
Utilizing the function was intuitive. Step one was to click on on “AI Podcast.” When you do, you might be offered with the 4 choices and an outline of every. For instance, the podcast mode is described as “impartial tone, two audio system,” the late-night present is described as “notes of comedy, three audio system,” the controversy is described as “argumentative, three audio system,” and the lecture is described as “academic, two audio system.”
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When you click on in your mode of alternative, you’ll be able to both click on on the “describe with textual content” or “choose file” choice to create the podcast. For the sake of this experiment, I uploaded a PDF of a ZDNET article I wrote. After you add a file, you’ll be able to attempt the normal text-to-audio function, during which a voice reads the content material to you phrase for phrase (ElevenLabs offers this feature as properly). That is fairly neat in itself; I had Gwyneth Paltrow learn my story to me.
I selected the AI podcast choice within the podcast mode, which took one minute and 25 seconds to create. On the planet of near-instantaneous AI, I used to be shocked that it took a bit greater than a minute, however all issues thought-about, a minute remains to be fairly fast –NotebookLM’s course of takes a couple of minutes.
The resulting podcast was nice. It was about 5 minutes (half as brief as what NotebookLM presently affords), correct to what I wrote, and seemed like a human dialog. A novel function I discovered useful was a transcript of the dialog which you could simply observe together with because the phrases are highlighted as they’re learn, like when singing karaoke. Different useful options allow you to management the velocity and simply revisit the unique textual content, which is displayed on a banner on the backside of the app web page.
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I then tried it once more with the late-night present and debate modes, because the nuances concerned in carrying these out sounded essentially the most intriguing to me. The late-night present was surprisingly higher than I anticipated, as I used to be nervous the three-person chat can be overwhelming. As an alternative, there was first rate banter and hand-off between the three protagonists that made it way more pleasant to take heed to than the usual. The humor added vivid analogies and metaphors that labored very well to breathe dwell into the content material with out altering its that means — doubtless particularly useful for denser subjects.
The talk mode gave me one speaker’s intonation that I couldn’t bear to take heed to due to the chipper, excessive intonations that had been unnatural to what was being stated — however this is not a deal breaker to me since you’ve the choice to choose which mode you would like, and somebody could also be a fan of the overly cheery.
Speechify Premium customers can attempt the AI Podcast function on iOS as we speak; net and Android are nonetheless on the best way, although Speechify didn’t specify a launch date.
Different options
Speechify has already been utilizing AI to gasoline different options on the platform, together with producing summaries and quizzes, earlier than transferring into podcasts. These options additionally received an improve that enables customers to create summaries and quizzes from particular chapters inside their studying quite than all the textual content.
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AI Recap is a brand new AI function that enables customers to click on “recap” to get a abstract of what they only learn, just like the refresher you see earlier than watching the subsequent episode of a TV present.
Speechify’s Chrome Extension received some updates, together with the addition of AI Summaries. This lets customers summarize any textual content instantly of their browser’s facet panel. Customers also can hone in on a part of the textual content through the use of the “ask AI” function. Speechify shares its Chrome Extension was additionally upgraded to be quicker, loading nearly immediately with out slowing down searching.
Some non-AI additions embody the power to take notes, spotlight textual content, bookmark readings, search in paperwork, share recordsdata, and improve voices that sound extra conversational. Speechify can be enabling a filtering expertise that makes it simpler for customers to seek out simply the proper voice for them.
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Lastly, within the back-to-school spirit, Speechify additionally added over 70,000 free books to Speechify, together with traditional literature, OpenStax’s catalog of free textbooks, and 130,000 textbooks from different publishers resembling Taylor & Francis and O’Reilly that customers can entry instantly within the platform.
