Meet "Steve" and "Sharon".
They feature in an AI-generated picture for the simple reason that they don't exist. At least not in the real world. They are the cute names I've given to the voices of Google's NotebookLM app which caused an online sensation when formally released to the world in the summer of 2024. Primarily a research tool, it allows you to upload as many as 50 different document sources (both written and audio) and presents you with an AI chatbot which becomes an instant expert on the information you have provided. I wish I'd had something like this when I was writing essays at school
If that were all it did that would be more than impressive alone. But a part of the tool is what Google understatedly call "audio summaries" in which the app takes a few minutes (never more than a couple) to generate a 5-15 minute mini-podcast featuring two artificially generated voices discussing (or doing a "deep dive") into the documents you uploaded. And it is this part that has proved to be a revelation, the function blowing up in a way its creators could never have envisaged. They will delve into absolutely anything, from your handwritten notes on a topic to huge legal documents. And the computer's ability to get to the heart of the matter and come to some profound conclusions is quite uncanny.
But for our purposes, we are going to give it songs to think about. Or more specifically Lyrics to pop hits, mini pieces of poetry that in their own cute way can touch our emotions and toy with our heartstrings. And Steve and Sharon love nothing more than to find out what they are about. Note that NotebookLM will happily swallow audio files too, so in theory you could give it the mp3 copies of a song and have it attempt to do the same thing. But I'm not sure the musical accompaniment would throw it off. So for this exercise, we will stick to the written word. And if you ever wanted to get a grip on just what Ed Sheeran is banging on about (yes, we'll do him too at some point) - this is the chance to find out. Happy listening.
