Google is testing enhanced capabilities of the Illuminate project, previously known for audio reviews of scientific papers. Recently, the service’s homepage featured publicly viewable lists of such AI-generated short reviews. Most new features are not yet available to the general public, but the interface includes mentions of additional options that may appear soon.
Among the experimental features is the creation of audio reviews not only from articles but also from classic books such as “Frankenstein,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and “The Great Gatsby.” Users with access to testing can change hosts, edit prompts, or even completely alter the dialogue script. Tools for editing, adding subtitles, and generating cover images are also in development, although these features are currently hidden.
The most intriguing feature is a new section called “Sparks,” currently marked as an early preview. This section features vertical video reviews lasting from one to three minutes, fully generated by AI based on various sources. The feature description indicates that any question can be instantly turned into a short video without human involvement—the model independently creates synchronized video and audio from a single query.
While the tool for creating such videos is currently available only for internal Google use, there are signs that the same model may be integrated into NotebookLM. This will allow users to receive video reviews based on their own materials in the form of short dialogue clips.
