ai personalised daily news briefing

Specify a range of news websites and use automations and ai create a daily news briefing in audio format, optionally accessible through Google Assistant

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This is a personal project.

I use Google Assistant to listen to news headlines in the morning, however the variety of approved news sources available is minimal and mostly limited to general news headlines. I wanted to create a way to add news summaries on different topics to this feed.

This is a simple automation which is automatically run by Zapier every morning at 7am, to retrieve headlines from a given list of websites. These headlines are summarised in text (with proper attribution) by an ai news reader, including some whimsical commentary. This text is then fed to OpenAI’s text-to-speech service, and the resulting file is added to an RSS feed which is ingested by Google Podcasts Manager, which makes it accessible as a podcast in Google Assistant.

To use yourself, simply duplicate the Zap linked below, replace the news sources spreadsheet with your own (one website per row). Add your OpenAI API key. You will need to edit the Zap to specify a delivery method (upload to a server, email it to you, message it to you on WhatsApp etc.)

requirements

• Zapier Professional Account (for multi-step Zaps)
• OpenAI API credit

Release notes

• 21/04/24 – version 1.0 released

known limitations

• Will sometimes repeat stories even though instructed not to
• Won’t provide a deep dive on headlines despite instructed to do so

roadmap

• Improve Zap structure to address issues above
• Randomise voices to provide more variety
• Investigate adding a jingle

try it yourself

ai-generated daily news summary from your favourite websites

Join your ai news team for your daily digest of news headlines from your favourite publications. Simply list your news sources in a Google Spreadsheet, and this automation will take care of the rest, delivering you a 3-5 minute news summary every morning.

View on Zapier

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Posted by

Jon Norris

About the author

Jon has worked in media and technology for almost 20 years, including stints at top agencies and tech companies. He is passionate about how technology can change the way we work, and the positive impact ai can have on the workplace.

ai tools used to produce this content

GPT-4 as part of this tool

Adobe Firefly for image assistance