Content Delivery is a Creative

If you haven't used Google's NotebookLM, you should definitely take it for a test drive. Though it's called a note-taking app, it's much more than that. I recently used it to turn a script into a podcast, and I was amazed.

The Sources

The primary source was a simple text file (.txt) written as an unstructured script that sounds like two people talking about prompt engineering which I will use to introduce my two-day course on Prompt Engineering. I then had Claude convert my text into bullet point form and had NotebookLM do it's magic again. I had accepted the default settings for this test. You can download the source files and output files below.

Configure Output

NotebookLM UI

The Output

The output can be configured using standard settings or a prompt. Interestingly enough, the conversion to voice from a bullet point form was about 40% longer, but the one converted from the prose version was better in both content and style. I then made some adjustments to the lengths to make them shorter and longer, assigned personas, and tried a few prompts. Still Iiked the original output using the default.

Analysis

By understanding prompt engineering, I can infer some of the prompt patterns NotebookLM may be using in converting source material into a podcast. They are contained in a root prompt that is hidden from the user. For one thing, it will always reference the source material. I also think they are using an outline pattern and then using a semantic filter pattern to find meaning to determine what's important. It also uses the tail generation (focus footnote) pattern to keep itself focused and summarises the content at the end.

What impressed me the most was it's understanding of semantics, also known as meaning. In almost all cases, the LLM inferred that what's really important is that learning to create effective prompts helps us to understand ourselves better. Not bad for a first go around. And just this week Google has announced many huge improvements in service offerings that will help content creators do what was once unimaginable. So now, if you imagine it, you can build it. What a great time to be living in.

Downloadables

Script in text form

Podcast from text

Script in bullet point form

Podcast from bullet point form