A new Google experiment – Audio Overviews – turns some search results into spoken summaries. The feature is now available in Google’s Labs for U.S. users.
What’s new: When enabled, Audio Overviews use Google’s Gemini AI model to generate short, conversational audio clips summarizing certain search queries. If you’re exploring a topic you’re unfamiliar with, the feature is designed to give you a “lay of the land” in a hands-free format, according to Google.
What it looks like. Here’s a screenshot of Audio Overviews:
How it works:
- After opting in through Search Labs, you may see a prompt on the search results page to generate an audio summary.
- The audio plays in a mini player directly within the results.
- Beneath the audio player, Google surfaces related webpages for users who want to explore more deeply.
- Users can give feedback with a thumbs up or down on both individual clips and the overall experiment.
Why we care. The move reflects Google’s push to make Search more multimodal. Google’s mission has long been to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This is another way Google is doing that to serve users who may prefer to consume content via audio. But it also could keep people within Google’s ecosystem for longer, continuing the ongoing trend of websites getting less clicks and traffic.
The announcement. Get an audio overview of Search results in Labs, then click through to learn more.