The Usefulness of NotebookLM's Audio Overview for Planetary Scientists

The availability and use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has increased substantially in recent years. NotebookLM was released in 2023 and is an AI tool with the capability to generate text summaries of input material. In 2024, an “Audio Overviews” feature was released that can generate podcast‐style audio files of the summarized material. We qualitatively assess the usefulness of the NotebookLM Audio Overviews feature for planetary scientists using three journal articles. The three articles tested were: Evidence of a Martian spatter cone south of Pavonis Mons by Flynn and Rader (2024), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2024.116286 ; Lava flow eruption conditions in the Tharsis volcanic province on Mars by Peters et al. (2021), https://doi.org/10.1029/2020je006791 ; and Martian volcanism: Current state of knowledge and known unknowns by Mouginis‐Mark et al. (2022), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemer.2022.125886 . Overall, the generated Audio Overviews did an excellent job summarizing the manuscripts and providing unique analogies for complex scientific topics. However, each summary contained some level of inaccuracy or “hallucinations.” This highlights the need to verify the audio summaries against the source material before it is shared with a broader audience. We see potential uses of the Audio Overviews as a pedagogical tool for students in planetary science courses and degree programs, and for professional planetary scientists to obtain a broad overview of published peer reviewed manuscripts. Nevertheless, the Audio Overviews should not replace reading the original material when a detailed understanding of the topic is required.