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Meta Launches NotebookLlama for Podcast Generation
An open alternative to NotebookLM, with new issues in audio quality and content
Isabella V28 October 2024

 

Meta has launched NotebookLlama, an open alternative to Google’s NotebookLM, for podcast generation. Based on Llama models, it creates transcripts and turns them into audio content, although the current sound quality is lower. The project addresses AI challenges, including hallucination issues.

Key Points:

  • NotebookLlama uses Meta’s Llama models to generate podcasts. 
  • The current audio quality has robotic characteristics and voice overlap. 
  • Meta researchers suggest future improvements with more advanced models. 
  • The issue of hallucinations remains an unsolved problem for AI-generated content.

Meta recently unveiled NotebookLlama, a new “open” implementation designed to generate podcasts that stands out for its use of the company’s own Llama models. Similar to Google’s already popular NotebookLM, the tool aims to transform text, such as articles or blog posts, into engaging audio. The process begins by creating a transcript from uploaded documents, followed by adding drama and breaks, before moving on to using text-to-speech models to generate the final audio. However, listening to the samples provided by NotebookLlama revealed rather poor audio quality, with voices sounding robotic and moments where speakers overlap, creating confusion. The researchers involved in the project acknowledged that the quality of the text-to-speech model represents a significant limitation when it comes to the naturalness of the produced sound. They also proposed the idea of ​​an alternative approach to writing podcasts, where two AI agents could discuss the topic and co-create the playlist, instead of relying on a single model. This project is not the first attempt to replicate NotebookLM’s capabilities, but it is part of a broader research effort, where various projects have achieved disparate results. It is important to note that none of the current solutions, including NotebookLM, have managed to completely eliminate the problem of hallucinations that plagues AI, with the risk that the generated content includes incorrect or invented information. The continuous evolution of these technologies suggests a rapidly changing landscape, with challenges and opportunities that require further investigation.

In such a dynamic context, research on AI and audio content generation presents itself as a fertile field for innovation and experimentation.