- Google has added an experimental feature to Discover that summarizes the day's stories as a podcast
- Daily Listen provides a five-minute audio summary of the day's most important stories, based on your interests and previous activity
- The feature is part of the experimental Google Labs program
Google has released an experimental feature that allows users to listen to their Discover feed instead of reading it.
The new Daily Listen feature, released via Google Labs, aggregates your news feed based on your interests and creates a short podcast with the day's top stories and relevant headlines.
The new feature includes Stories based on your previous interactions with the Discover feed, which in turn is personalized based on user data and web searches.
To enable Daily Listen, users must first enroll in the Google Labs program, which provides access to experimental and tested features before they become generally available.
9to5Google reports that generative AI is being used to compile Daily Lists, noting that Daily Listen was made available in the US on January 8th. Since there is hardly any official announcement from Google, it is impossible to estimate if and when this experimental feature will be available in other territories.
For US users, Daily Listen can be activated by joining the Google Labs program. Google Labs can be accessed at the top left of the Google app on Android or iOS.
Once activated, Daily Listen will appear as a widget at the top of the Discover feed. Each “episode” of the podcast lasts about five minutes. PhoneArena reports that the first Daily Listen appears about a day after signing up for the Google Labs program.
In addition to an audio summary, Daily Listen offers a scrolling transcript to read along as well as the typical pause, rewind and fast forward controls.
As Android Central points out, Daily Listen is similar in some ways to the audio overview feature of Google's AI-powered online note-taking tool NotebookLM.
Audio Overview was recently upgraded to full-featured status, losing its experimental status and being fully integrated into NotebookLM. Daily Listen is still too new to predict whether it will integrate properly with Discover.
However, Google seems to be pushing for an increasingly audio-based relationship with our devices through features like Gemini Live, so I wouldn't be surprised if Daily Listen sticks around.