Last week, Martin wrote about Chrome gaining AI features powered by Gemini. There's a new AI feature rolling out to Chrome on Android, a read aloud option that narrates webpages like a podcast.
The feature was spotted by Android Authority’s Mishaal Rahman. Google has been working on AI-powered features for a while now, Audio Overviews are available in Search, Docs, but most notably in NotebookLM. It uses by Gemini's models to generate podcasts for extensive research topics. It seems like Google wants to take this a step further, and bring it to people's daily lives, right in their browser.
Chrome on Android already has a read aloud feature, which is basically an accessibility option. You can use it by tapping on the three-dot menu button (when on a web page), and select "Listen to this page". But this narration is robotic, and rather boring. The same option, Listen to this page, is gaining a new button in the bottom left corner. Tapping on this button generates AI playback like a podcast featuring two AI hosts, which you can listen to, just like in NotebookLM. You can tap the button again to switch the AI playback off, and use the regular text-to-speech mode.
(Image courtesy: Android Authority)
Google began testing this feature in June 2025 in Chrome's Canary channel, and is now bringing it to the stable version of the browser. Audio Overview in Chrome for Android is said to be available in version 140.0.7339.124. I don't have access to it yet, the feature is reportedly rolling out slowly to users.
If it reads the entire page like a podcast instead of reading a short summary of the web page, that's a good feature, right? Anything that helps with reading without summarizing gets my vote. It could be very helpful for those times when you don't feel like reading the text yourself, especially if an article is several pages long. Privacy on the other hand, well, if that could be a concern, unless the browser is generating the playback locally on the device.
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