Zack Reneau-Wedeen (Photo by @coletterobinson )
Aside from being able to listen to podcasts right from the search window, it looks like Google has so big plans for podcasts on its platform. There are three key features the company wants to hone in on in the coming years. None of these are real technologies yet but it does introduce to us what Google wants to happen with the medium. Google Podcasts Product Manager Zack Reneau-Wedeen (pictured above) said in the latest part of the five-part series on Pacific Content that they are working to “make these experiences possible.”
The three key things include instant transcription, lookahead scrubbing, and instant translation. With the help of artificial intelligence, Google will be able to “listen” to each podcast episode and transcribe these into a time-stamped document that can be searchable. Not only will this make it easier to jump to specific parts of a podcast but it will also help with searches on Google itself, so if you want to find something out, you might be directed to a podcast where that subject matter is being discussed. Lookahead scrubbing will work similar to what you can do with YouTube videos. With the help of the text transcription, you’ll be able to scrub ahead on podcasts and head straight into parts you want to listen to. And then Google also wants to bring instant translation to podcasts so that if English or whatever language the podcast is on, it’ll translate it into a language you understand. And with the help of AI, it might even be able to deliver that in the original voice tones of the podcasters.