Meta releases an open-source alternative to Google’s NotebookLM

4 minute read

More topics: Apple unveils the first Apple Intelligence features | OpenAI introduces ChatGPT search

Magic AI News

Hi AI Enthusiasts,

Welcome to this week’s Magic AI News, where we present you the most exciting AI news of the week. Today, we are discussing an open-source version of Google’s Audio Overview feature and the initial features of Apple Intelligence. Stay curious! 😎

This week’s Magic AI tool is a free alternative to GitHub Copilot. This tool speeds up your coding workflow from day one!

Let’s explore this week’s AI news together. 👇🏽


Top AI news of the week

🎧 Meta releases an open-source alternative to Google’s NotebookLM

Meta has released NotebookLlama on GitHub, an open-source version of NotebookLM.

The details:

  • The GitHub repo guides you through tutorials on how to build a PDF-to-Podcast workflow.
  • It assumes no prior knowledge of LLMs, prompting, or audio models, as everything is explained in the GitHub repository.
  • Unlike Google’s NotebookLM, it only includes the PDF-to-Podcast feature.

You can see the workflow below:

Workflow to generate a podcast (Image by Meta)
Workflow to generate a podcast (Image by Meta)

Our thoughts

The GitHub repo shows how to build a podcast generator using Llama models and Python. Very exciting for experimenting. However, the results are significantly worse compared to Google’s Audio Overview feature. For example, the voices in the podcast sound much worse than on NotebookLM.

The Meta researchers admit that there is still some progress to be made. Nevertheless, it’s a great project for playing around with current language models.

More information: 🔗 GitHub | Heise Online

🤖 Apple unveils the first Apple Intelligence features

Apple has released the long-awaited AI functions with iOS 18.1. The new features can boost your productivity and creativity. Let’s take a closer look.

The details:

  • iOS 18.1 introduces system-wide writing tools for rewriting, proofreading, and summarizing text.
  • Siri has a better context understanding, and can now answer questions about Apple devices.
  • You can use the new AI features when you have a device with the M1 or A17 Pro chip or later. First, you have to register on a waiting list to get access. Unusual!

Our thoughts

Finally, Apple’s AI functions are here! We are looking forward to testing the functions in the coming weeks. In our opinion, the writing tools can be very helpful, especially if you’re writing in a foreign language. It feels similar to Grammarly.

More information: 🔗 Apple Newsroom

OpenAI has introduced web search capabilities for its chatbot ChatGPT. ChatGPT has now become a competitor to Google search.

The details:

  • The new web search capabilities are only available for ChatGPT Plus and Team subscribers. The free version has no access.
  • ChatGPT activates the web search automatically, depending on the prompt. Alternatively, the user can also activate it via a button.
  • ChatGPT lists the sources it used for the answers in a separate column.
  • News sources include the Associated Press, Axel Springer, Condé Nast, Financial Times, Reuters, Time, Vox Media, and others.

Below, you can see how ChatGPT lists sources:

ChatGPT search (Image by OpenAI)
ChatGPT search (Image by OpenAI)

Our thoughts

There is a lot happening in the search engine market. Many AI-powered search engines like Perplexity, You.com, and Microsoft Copilot are already on the market. Google Search is facing high competition for the first time in a long while.

In our opinion, the best search engine in the future is a fully AI-powered search engine. We believe the chatbot interface is the most intuitive way for humans to interact with computers. It is the user interface of the future!

However, there are still some things left to do. Sometimes, AI-powered search engines misrepresent information. This is a critical issue that needs significant improvement before these search engines can be fully integrated into society.

👉🏽 How often do you double-check facts provided by an AI chatbot?

More information: 🔗 OpenAI


Hand-picked AI tool list


Magic AI tool of the week

Do you ever want a local AI coding assistant? Yes, then you are here in the right place! Not a long time ago, most coding assistants were only available via an API of a big provider like OpenAI or Anthropic. Those days are a thing of the past.

Now, you can run state-of-the-art LLMs like Llama 3.2, Phi 3, or Codestral locally on your laptop. The VSCode plugin continue, and the open-source tool Ollama makes it happen.

To learn how to create a local AI coding assistant, you should check out our blog article. After reading our article, you can chat with your codebase in VSCode and can use functions like autocompletion:

Local Coding assistant in VSCode

👉🏽 Learn more in our article “Mistral’s Codestral: Create a local AI Coding Assistant for VSCode”!


Articles of the week


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Thanks for reading, and see you next time.

- Tinz Twins

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