Being interrupted is annoying. Apparently, even AI-generated podcast hosts agree.
Or so Google NotebookLM’s customers found. NotebookLM launched final yr and went viral for its characteristic that creates solely AI-generated podcast-like discussions from content material customers add, mentioned by chatty AI bots performing like podcast hosts. In December 2024, NotebookLM launched a brand new characteristic referred to as “Interactive Mode” which allows the user to “call in” to the podcast and ask questions, basically interrupting the AI hosts as they discuss.
When the characteristic was first rolled out, the AI hosts appeared aggravated at such interruptions. They had been often giving snippy feedback to human callers like, “I used to be attending to that” or “As I used to be about to say,” which felt “oddly adversarial,” Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs, defined to TechCrunch.
So NotebookLM’s staff determined that some “friendliness tuning” was so as, and posted a self-deprecating joke about it on the product’s official X account:
After we launched interactive Audio Overviews, which allow you to “name in” and ask the AI hosts a dwell query, we needed to do some “friendliness tuning” as a result of the hosts appeared aggravated at being interrupted.
File this away in “issues I by no means thought could be my job, however are.”
— notebooklm (@notebooklm) January 13, 2025
Woodward stated the staff mounted the issue partly by learning how its personal members would reply interruptions extra politely.
“We examined a wide range of completely different prompts, usually learning how individuals on the staff would reply interruptions, and we landed on a brand new immediate that we expect feels extra pleasant and interesting,” he stated.
It’s not completely clear why the difficulty cropped up within the first place. Human podcast hosts typically show frustration when interrupted, which might find yourself in a system’s coaching information. A supply conversant in the matter stated this case probably stemmed from the system’s prompting design, not coaching information, nonetheless.
Regardless, the repair seems to be working. When TechCrunch tried out Interactive Mode, the AI host didn’t sound aggravated however did categorical shock, exclaiming “Woah!” earlier than politely asking the human to chime in.
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