Google’s best tool yet now turns your content into a video presentation

That’s because NotebookLM doesn’t just organise your information. Thanks to AI smarts under the hood, it ‘understands’ what you feed it. This means it can help you summarise information and even deliver insights and connections between ideas.

To find NotebookLM, well, just Google it. Sign in with your Google account and you’re in. There’s an app as well, but I’d recommend ignoring it for now, except for lining up stuff to listen to, because it’s missing all the best features.

I’ve been using NotebookLM for a few months and I can’t believe the free tier gives you access to almost everything. NotebookLM Plus, which comes with a paid subscription to Gemini and Google’s storage plan, increases the token limit but delivers essentially the same experience.

How to use it

You need no tech know-how to use this fascinating platform. Click the plus sign and you’ll see a three-pane interface called Sources, Chat, Studio.

It all starts with Sources, which you use to add content. Sticking to one subject, add files from your own device or cloud storage. You can feed it PDFs, Google Doc files, YouTube video links, website links, notes, text files and images in some formats. But don’t give it junk – use quality content. You can add up to 50 pieces per notebook and you can have 100 notebooks on the free tier.

The content you feed it stays in the cloud but is private to you. You can share notebooks with others, but only by intention and with a link. Unlike general-purpose LLMs such as Gemini and ChatGPT, it isn’t prone to hallucinations and sycophancy.

There’s also a Discover Sources feature that lets you specify what you’re looking for and it serves up links you can add to your collection of sources. But be warned, it can often contain sub-par content so you have to vet each one.

Where the magic happens

The magic begins when you finish uploading your content and move on to the other tabs — Chat and Studio. This is where you can ‘interact’ with your content using the chatbot. What’s great about this is that AI already seems capable of seeing patterns and connections that humans can’t. This means it can give you insights and even advice. From these two panes, you can get FAQs, briefing docs, notes and study guides.

At some point Google added mind maps. These are flow charts of your content, dividing it into subtopics and further subtopics, expanding as you click. This lets you see exactly how the content is organised, idea-wise. Clicking each box in the map takes you to that chunk of content. It’s a beautiful structure that you can use for clarity, re-organisation, and insights. You can even use this to plan a presentation or training, to write a paper or book or to quiz students.

Another extremely powerful feature is Audio Overview, which we’ve written about before. It turns your content into a podcast featuring two AI hosts. You can specify whether you want it short, medium or long, and even ask the AI hosts to focus on specific aspects using the Customise box. You can also use an experimental feature to interrupt the hosts and ‘join’ the podcast by asking a question. Again, this podcast is private to you by default.

Video killed the radio star

On 29 July Google added the much-anticipated Video Overview feature in the redesigned Studio section. This generates a set of presentation slides with a voiceover by an AI host. Here, too, you can choose what you want the AI to focus on. Video Overviews will apparently feature different formats in the future but even as they are, their potential use for remote training is obvious. It’ll be interesting to see how else users put this feature to use.

Google recently partnered with content sources such as The Economist to start a feature called Featured Notebooks, the first eight of which have appeared in the interface. These high-quality notebooks show how it’s done, and can be queried deeply for insights. We recommend you try them before creating your own notebooks.

The New Normal: The world is at an inflexion point. Artificial Intelligence is set to be as massive a revolution as the Internet has been. The option to just stay away from AI will not be available to most people, as all the tech we use takes the AI route. This column series introduces AI to the non-techie in an easy and relatable way, aiming to demystify and help a user to actually put the technology to good use in everyday life.

Mala Bhargava is most often described as a ‘veteran’ writer who has contributed to several publications in India since 1995. Her domain is personal tech and she writes to simplify and demystify technology for a non-techie audience.