Google is constantly at work to simplify our lives. The company often uses its in-house tools to improve its other services. One such instance of this is Google Meet and Chat integration that lets you catch up on a missed meeting. Now, the Mountain View giant is rolling out a handy little feature that makes handling lengthy PDF files easy. The new Google Drive update uses AI to turn long PDFs into audio summaries.
Google Drive will use AI to turn long PDFs into audio summaries
The Google Drive audio overviews rely on Gemini to generate audio summaries of long documents. The feature will make it easier to catch up on your PDF content more conveniently and also quickly. We might even add that this reduces your screen time. Google also notes that most summaries range from two to ten minutes, depending on the length and complexity of the PDF.
After the update, when you open a PDF file in Google Drive on the web, you will now see a new “Audio Overview” button in the toolbar. Tapping this will enable Drive to process the file and push out an audio summary.
The audio summaries range from two to ten minutes
The audio summaries are accessible through a new “Audio overviews” folder in your Drive. You can also listen to the audio summary once it’s finished processing by tapping the play button in the Gemini side panel. Google will also notify you through an email notification to start listening to the audio summary.
The audio overviews are currently available only in English and only on the Drive web. The feature is on by default. The feature is rolling out to select Google Workspace and Google One tiers. including Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Google One AI Premium, AI Ultra, and AI Ultra for Business. The rollout of the Google Drive audio summaries may take up to 15 days to reach everyone.
