Google’s New “Audio Overviews” Feature Brings Spoken Search Summaries with Two AI Voices

Google has begun testing a new feature called Audio Overviews—spoken summaries of search results delivered through two synthetic voices. Unlike conventional text-based synopses, users are invited to listen to a dialogue between two “virtual interlocutors” who convey the essence of the retrieved information. This innovation is powered by the same technology behind NotebookLM, where the feature first debuted last year.

At present, the functionality is available exclusively through the experimental Search Labs platform and requires manual activation. Once enabled, an embedded audio player appears in the search results—not at the top, as is common with AI-generated text summaries, but slightly lower, beneath the “Related Questions” section. To initiate playback, users must press a dedicated button, after which the system generates a concise conversational summary within seconds.

The audio file is accompanied by a list of sources and includes options for adjusting playback speed. As an example, Google suggests a query about how noise-canceling headphones work, though in practice, Audio Overviews are triggered for a wide range of topics. In fact, typing the phrase “Google audio overviews” into the search bar will prompt the feature to explain itself.

Initial impressions suggest that these spoken summaries handle simple queries well but may falter with more complex subjects. In NotebookLM, the generation process relies on a limited set of user-provided documents, whereas in search, the model draws upon a vastly broader and more heterogeneous context, increasing the risk of informational inaccuracies—an issue previously observed in text-based AI summaries as well.

Beyond search, Google has already integrated Audio Overviews into Gemini Deep Research mode and Google Docs. Given the company’s rapid pace of AI development, it is likely that these auditory summaries will soon extend to additional products—and may eventually become a staple of the search experience, much like text-based AI overviews, which began as an experiment but unexpectedly evolved into a core component.