Google makes its note-taking AI NotebookLM extra helpful

Google launched its note-taking app NotebookLM final yr for researchers, college students, and anybody who wants to prepare the knowledge they’ve gathered. Now, customers can now add Google Slides and net URLs as sources, not simply the Google Docs, PDFs, and textual content recordsdata it accepted beforehand.

The brand new Pocket book Information additionally reads sources in NotebookLM and creates examine guides, FAQs, or briefing paperwork, and inline citations can level to your individual sources to fact-check AI responses — as much as 50 sources per “pocket book,” or mission, and every supply could be 500,000 phrases lengthy. Beforehand, individuals may solely add 5 sources.

Customers can even now ask questions on charts, photos, and diagrams they uploaded to the platform as a result of NotebookLM is working on Google’s Gemini 1.5 Professional, the most recent massive language mannequin that at present powers the paid model of the Gemini chatbot. I used to be capable of strive my hand at these options to see how they work.

In a briefing, Raiza Martin, senior product supervisor at Google Labs, advised reporters that NotebookLM “is a closed system.” It won’t do any net searches past studying the web site content material customers add. Martin says NotebookLM’s solutions to queries about information or photos will solely come from the consumer’s “corpus” or physique of data they add to the platform. 

I attempted NotebookLM to see the brand new options in motion. The Pocket book Information was not but out there for reporters to strive, however I used to be ready so as to add new information sources, get inline citations, and get Gemini 1.5 Professional to take a look at graphs for me. I requested NotebookLM to provide me info from a PDF of a line graph, and it gave me the numbers I used to be in search of. I additionally requested it to summarize the textual content of the EU AI Act, and it was capable of give me an summary and embrace citations so I knew the place it was pulling its solutions from.

Sadly, net URL sources didn’t work in my demo: at any time when I pasted a hyperlink into NotebookLM, the mannequin would begin to add the web site, but it surely didn’t present up on my listing of sources.

NotebookLM isn’t a software that can write analysis papers for you, in contrast to Perplexity’s Pages, which supposedly helps researchers discover information and make it simpler to share info (however, in my view, fails to take action).

Google gave examples of how individuals have been utilizing NotebookLM, together with shouting out writer Walter Isaacson, who the corporate says used the platform to research Marie Curie’s journals for his subsequent e-book. Google additionally says that nonprofits use NotebookLM “to determine wants in underserved communities and manage info for grant proposals.” 

Martin says that whereas NotebookLM’s target market stays researchers, college students, and infrequently writers, the corporate discovered different use circumstances, like a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon grasp who used NotebookLM to organize a marketing campaign. 

NotebookLM is now out there in over 200 international locations and territories and helps greater than 100 languages.