You can do some intriguing things with generative AI. You can create pictures by just typing in a few prompts. You can do the same to create essays, emails, and more. But did you know you can use it to collect your research on a topic, then ask it questions—even create a podcast with two hosts talking about your topic?
These incredible features are all part of NotebookLM, a new free service from Google. All you have to do to get started is have a Google account and then head to the Notebook website.
But what is this new service about, and how do you use it? Let's find out more.
What Is NotebookLM?
Let's say you have a bunch of information you want to make sense of, such as several research papers, multiple equipment manuals, study notes, or articles on a topic of interest. Rather than go through everything, you can upload it to NotebookLM, which then uses generative AI to answer your questions, create summaries, and even produce a unique podcast.
NotebookLM is a new service from Google. Originally released in mid-2023 as an experimental feature, NotebookLM gradually improved until it started catching people's attention in late 2024.
It's a notebook where you can add website links, upload documents and books, paste text, and even include audio clips and YouTube videos. Once you give NotebookLM all the information on a topic, you can ask it questions about the material you provided. You can ask it to create summaries, a study guide, and even a podcast!
Yes, one of NotebookLM's outstanding features is that it generates a podcast using AI voices. Two hosts talk in a very natural way about the information you supplied (take a listen to the podcast generated about NotebookLM for this article).
Getting Started
NotebookLM uses Google's Gemini generative AI models to create its content. It's like using ChatGPT, but you control what information it takes in, and you can add quite a few sources.
Load the website, click on 'Add source', then upload files, add URLs to websites, online PDFs, and YouTube videos, or paste in text. You can also pull documents or presentations directly from Google Drive.
Once the sources are in place, you can start asking questions in the chatbox. You can also generate study guides, timelines, and briefing docs. If you find more information online, just add it to the sources: you can add up to 50 sources in the free version and 300 in the paid-for plus version of NotebookLM.
NoteBookLM also summarises the sources you added. When you click on a source after adding it, you can see a summary, key topics, and a text copy of the material you added. If it's a YouTube video, you'll also see an embedded version of the video as well as a transcription. You can upload photos with text, such as newspaper clippings—NotebookLM will make OCR scans of images with text, meaning it extracts the text from images and turns it into digital text.
Some Examples And Cautions
People are still discovering new ways to use NotebookLM. Some popular examples are:
- Collecting and summarising academic papers
- Study notes
- Adding repair manuals
- Collecting recipes
- Summarising large amounts of chat messages
- Understanding information from foreign-language documents
- Planning projects
- Market research and trends
- Create marketing material and competitor research
You can create multiple notebooks, so experiment with different projects and ideas.
But be sure to double-check important information because NotebookLM can make mistakes. This is due to 'hallucination', a generative AI quirk that can make up completely fake information. Still, NotebookLM tries to stick to the information you provide, so you are able to see where it sourced an answer, and it uses some of the most advanced AI logic to connect ideas to ensure better accuracy.
Also, don't put sensitive information such as bank account details or people's personal information into NotebookLM without checking the risks. If you need more control over the data you add, consider NotebookLM Enterprise.
If you have a bunch of information and you would rather not trawl through it all to get answers, NotebookLM is a great service. It's also free to use, so head over to the Google NotebookLM page and try it out for yourself! For more business tech solutions visit our Business Tech page.
