Google docs audio summary: Google has unveiled a new artificial intelligence feature for Google Docs that changes written documents into short, spoken-word audio summaries in a range of human-like voices. The feature, which Google called Audio Summaries, was announced on Thursday alongside other updates to Google Workspace that involve using machine learning to help users get through their work faster. Using Gemini, the tool is still only available for paid subscribers and a handful of individual accounts, in what is another step in Google’s ongoing effort to simplify productivity tools and save us time.

Audio Summaries Arrive in Google Docs

In a Workspace blog post, Google outlined its launch of Audio Summaries for Google Docs. The feature utilises Gemini to provide a summary of long documents or reports in short form and read it back in natural, human-based sentence formations.

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Audio Summaries don't sound how typical text-to-speech products do. They are “a quick oral summary of what you have in your document, with multiple tabs,” says a Google description, and are meant to be no longer than a few minutes so that users can quickly become caught up while juggling other tasks.

The new feature seems similar in function to Audio Overviews, which first launched with NotebookLM before being brought over to the Gemini app. Like those summaries, Google Docs Audio Summaries are therefore supposed to remain focused on the contents of the document at hand and not include any extraneous references.

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Google is offering several controls to customise the listening experience:

- Multiple voice styles, including narrator, persuader, and coach

- Adjustable playback speed

- Seek controls to skip forward or backward

For organisational users, Google said there are currently no admin-level controls to manage Audio Summaries.

Audio Summaries have started rolling out to paid subscribers, which include Business Standard and Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, the Google AI Ultra for Business add-on, and the Google AI Pro for Education add-on, as well as individual plans of Google AI Pro and Ultra.