Microsoft Word can now read you document overviews like podcasts

Microsoft Word, integrated with Microsoft 365 Copilot, now offers a feature that can generate audio overviews of documents that you can listen to like podcasts. This tool produces smart, summarized narrations of Word documents, PDFs, or Teams meeting recordings stored in OneDrive. Users can customize the listening experience with playback controls such as speed adjustment, jumping forward/backward, pausing, and saving the audio to OneDrive for later or sharing.

There are two styles available for the audio overviews:

• Summary Style: A single AI voice provides a clear, quick summary of the main points.
• Podcast Style: Two AI voices (male and female, with neutral American accents) engage in a conversational discussion about the document’s content, creating a dynamic, story-like podcast feel.

This feature is currently available only in English and requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. It works on documents stored online in OneDrive or SharePoint but doesn’t support local files. Generation time is typically a few minutes, even for large documents.

To use it, open a document in Word on Windows or the web, click the Copilot button on the Home tab, and ask the AI to generate an audio overview. The resulting audio has a media player embedded with controls, and you can switch between summary and podcast styles.

This audio overview feature enhances productivity by allowing users to absorb key document insights hands-free, useful for multitasking or on the move.