Replies (1)

• @mathaetaes@infosec.exchange 2026-05-08 20:24

  @ahimsa_pdx@disabled.social Yeah, so I don't use either so I don't have first-hand experience to judge, but I've heard one of the mp3s he generated with NotepadLM - I've attached it here, I think. Basically, he fed it some article about owning an Aston Martin on a Ford budget (he's super into cars), and it spit out an audio file summarizing the article as if two people were talking about it. I tried to post the MP3 but it failed, so here's my hastily hand-typed psudo-transcript to give you the idea: Voice1: Welcome to the Deep Dive. Um, I want you to picture something for a second. Voice2: Ok, I'm picturing it. Voice1: You walk out into your garage, you flip the light switch, and you've got the swan doors that angle slightly upward as you open them just to clear the curb Voice 2: Yeah, that's a brilliant piece of design Voice 1: And then you get in, settle into the leather, feel the cold aluminum of the shifter... and you realize something incredible. You didn't actually have to mortgage your house to put this car in your garage. So rather than just reading an article or research paper to you, it gives a back-and-forth banter that hits the high points. It's important to note that this is still an AI summary, so it will get things wrong. You can really only use it when it's something you already know lots about and are able to passively detect bullsh*t. He said it will occasionally say something that's surprising, and he has to go searching through the document to confirm whether it actually says that or if the model output stuff that isn't in the document. Also, it's a summary, so you miss the details. Since reading takes so much time and effort for him, he uses this to keep up on the latest about stuff he's interested in while he's doing other things (working, driving, etc). NotepadLM outputs an audio file, so he can toss it on his phone and listen wherever. He's got some form of ADD, so just listening to a screen reader doesn't hold his attention. It's too dry. It solves a different problem than a screen reader, but the way he does it, you need an entire local AI stack. It sounds like Adobe just buried one into the new Acrobat Reader... or at least that's what I assume they're doing. I haven't installed Acrobat on a machine since browsers started parsing PDFs, so all of this is conjecture, but my guess is that's how it differs from a screen reader. Sorry for the long post - it'd have been easier if I could just post the MP3. I hope I explained that well.

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