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overviews

Google Audio Overview
Gaming Gear

Here’s why you should be excited about Audio Overviews coming to Google Search

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  • Google is testing the NotebookLM feature Audio Overviews in Search
  • The feature will offer short, AI-generated audio summaries for certain queries.
  • The feature uses Gemini models to deliver podcast-style explanations with clickable links.

I’ve been a fan of the Audio Overviews feature in Google’s NotebookLM since I first experimented with it last year. Now, it’s coming to Google Search, currently only as a test in the Labs, but it brings a more bite-sized version of the AI-generated “podcasts” that I like in NotebookLM.

Once you’ve opted in through Labs, you’ll start seeing a little prompt on some search results pages saying, “Generate Audio Overview.” Tap that, wait about 30 to 40 seconds, and out comes a compact audio clip of around five minutes, sometimes less, that explains what you looked up in the form of two AI-generated voices having a discussion. Not too deep, but not one-sentence shallow either. Think of a middle ground between “Wikipedia rabbit hole” and “I read the headline only.”

While you listen, the audio player stays docked in your results page, showing clickable links to the sources the AI pulled from. You can keep browsing, tap into related articles, or just listen and absorb. If you like what you hear, you can give it a thumbs up. If it’s egregiously wrong, the thumbs down is there too.


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Though similar to what NotebookLM does with its Audio Overviews, the Search version has one major difference. NotebookLM only uses documents you upload, YouTube videos, and websites you specifically link to. Google Search’s version pulls from public web content. That can be good or bad, depending on what you look up. Something straightforward and scientific might be fine, but a discussion about the best movie ever might get a different audio track every time you look. Here’s an example I recorded a clip from.

AI podcast searches

It’s hardly perfect, and while the voices are good, they are still AI voices. You also might notice it parroting phrases straight from someone’s Reddit post. But it is listenable and, as Google points out, hands-free, with the option to adjust the speed of the speakers and the links there to provide more context. You can speed it up or slow it down, skip around, or follow the links as you go. It’s AI-enhanced Search, not a new audiobook.

For now, not every search will offer to create an Audio Overview. You also have to be in the U.S. and sign up for Labs right now. But, I’d expect it to have a general release pretty soon. Then you can ask how lithium-ion batteries work or why Roman concrete is still standing, and get a nice mini discussion from digital characters.

Think of it as how video summaries and image carousels brought new dimensions to how we take in information online. Audio Overviews are another aspect of that and a win for auditory learners or people with visual impairments, With OpenAI and Perplexity and a dozen AI search engines nipping at its heels, Google needs whatever tricks it can muster to stand out and an AI podcast as the answer to a serach is definitely one way to be unique, at least for now.

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Audio Overviews in Google Search
Gaming Gear

Too Busy to Read? Google’s Audio Overviews Summarize Your Search Results Aloud

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The next time you wonder why school buses are yellow, you might not have to read a single word to get the answer. Google’s latest experimental feature can literally tell you the answer, in a tiny audio clip that loads right to your results page.

Launched Friday in Search Labs, Audio Overviews uses Google’s latest Gemini AI models to turn certain queries into 30- to 45-second, podcast-style explainers, complete with on-screen source links for fact-checking. 

The move pushes Google’s AI Overviews beyond text, positioning Search for a semi-hands-free, voice-first future, while also raising more questions about what this means for publishers who rely on clicks.

How you can try out Audio Overviews right now

If you’re interested, you can try out Google’s Audio Overviews right now. Go to the Google Labs website, opt in to the Search Labs program if you’re not already signed up and toggle on Audio Overviews. 

You can hit Try an example to test out the feature.

Nelson Aguilar/CNET

The next time you run a query, like “How do I stop apps from tracking my exact location on my iPhone,” Google might show you a button that says Generate Audio Overview, which you’ll have to scroll down a little to see. 

You can then tap on the Audio Overview to process the clip, and then press play. You can speed up the audio, mute the clip and also rate it with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to better train it.

Audio Overviews are only available in the US for now.

Nelson Aguilar/CNET

Below the player, Google lists the web pages it drew from, so you can click through to fact-check the information or just dig deeper.

For those with visual impairments, this new feature offers a glimpse at what a voice-first Google might look like. But until Google expands language support and proves the summaries are dependable, consider this a nifty experiment for now, not a substitute for reading the full story.



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How to turn off Google’s AI Overviews in web searches
Product Reviews

How to turn off Google’s AI Overviews in web searches

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Google’s AI Overviews do not save me time. For one, I work for a tech blog and am therefore professionally curious as to whether or not the generated answers are correct, so I spend a few ticks figuring that out. (Answer: Sometimes, but not always!)

Then things get existential as I contemplate how long a self-cannibalizing system can sustain itself — if the AI gives answers pulled from websites that survive on visits from readers, what happens when no one visits those sites because AI cribbed the answer? Will I still get to write for websites if websites die from traffic starvation? It’s a lot to think about when all I want is TSA’s latest lithium-ion battery regulations.

Curiously (and unhelpfully) the first result when you Google “How to turn off AI Overviews in Chrome” doesn’t actually answer the question. The entry, from Google Support, discusses turning the feature off back when AI Overviews were experimental and handled through Google Labs. Navigate a little further down that page and you’ll see:

Note: Turning off “AI Overviews and more” in Search Labs will not disable all AI Overviews in Search. AI Overviews are part of Google Search like other features, such as knowledge panels, and can’t be turned off.

Thankfully, I work with intelligent people and one of them supplied me with a simple method of ensuring each search performed in a Chrome browser bypasses the AI Overview and uses results from the Web tab only. Here’s how you too can avoid wasted time (and energy) so you can search like it’s 2024.

  1. Click the three dots in the upper right corner of your Chrome browser

  2. Go to Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines and search

  3. Under Site search, click the Add button

  4. Enter Name: Google/Web

  5. Enter Shortcut: https://www.google.com/

  6. Enter URL: {google:baseURL}search?udm=14&q=%s

  7. Click Add

Google / Engadget

Then, (hat tip to Tom’s Hardware for helping me figure this bit out) set the search type to default by clicking the three dots next to the shortcut you just created and clicking Make default.

Now, go Google “the best laptop power banks” and click on the Engadget entry (usually one to four results down) and spend a few moments looking at the ads (and the picture of my desk) before you move on so I can still have a job in 2026.

In that same Tom’s Hardware article, Avram Piltch links to the extension he built, which is a super easy way to hide the AI Overviews from sight. It’ll still generate the response, you just won’t see it. I prefer the Web method above, to avoid any unnecessary machine processing on my behalf, but the extension is easier and keeps you on the familiar “All” search results tab with knowledge panels, video results and the like.

To turn off the AI Overview for Chrome on your phone, I’ll direct you to the fine folks at tenbluelinks. Just open the link in your phone’s browser and follow the steps for Android or iOS.



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AI overviews
Gaming Gear

Google search’s AI overviews are awful, but here’s a browser extension that gets rid of them

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Among the countless examples of the ever-burgeoning ens***ification of the internet, Google’s AI-powered search overviews rank pretty highly. Verily, I pine for the days of reliable, organic search results devoid of AI slop.

But don’t despair. Well, not entirely. For the editor-in-chief of our sister website, Tom’s Hardware, has come up with a browser extension that gets rid of AI overviews from Google search results. Give it up for Avram Piltch and his Bye Bye, Google AI extension.

To quote the man himself, Avram says Google, “decided to push AI overviews and AI mode onto search users, regardless of the damage it causes to the user experience or the harm it may inflict on publishers and the entire open web.”


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He also points out that Google is rolling out AI Overviews to ever more territories and countries and fears that Google may eventually want to replace all organic search results with AI Overviews . His solution is the aforementioned Bye, Bye Google AI, which works in Chrome or Edge or any desktop browser that supports Chrome extensions. He’s currently working on Firefox and Safari versions.

“The extension allows you to hide the AI Overview section from all of your queries and goes a step further, allowing you to hide other areas of the Google SERP that you may not want, such as the videos section, text ads, or ‘People Also Ask,'” Avram says.

The latest 1.5 version now supports 19 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin (Trad + Simplified), Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Hindi, Thai, Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Dutch, Danish and Portuguese. You can also now hide the AI Mode tab, not just AI Overviews.

Avram also explains the other ways to kill the AI Overview, such as adding “-noai” to your search string. But if you want to permanently kill AI Overviews—or at least for as long as this extension works and Google is serving up any organic results at all—then Bye, Bye Google AI feels like a no brainer of an extension.

Of course, you could just use another search engine, like DuckDuckGo. Moreover, the seemingly falling quality of Google’s organic results isn’t fixed by this extension. But if you just want to remove a little AI slop from your daily interneting, then this could be the tool for you.



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