Google‘s AI-powered note-taking tool NotebookLM is now available globally. The tool, which the company calls a research and writing assistant, also adds support for Google Slides and websites as sources. It is getting more powerful as well, thanks to Gemini 1.5 Pro, the latest version of Google’s LLM (large language model) that powers the paid version of the Gemini AI chatbot.
NotebookLM gets more powerful with Gemini 1.5 Pro support
Google launched NotebookLM to help researchers, students, and everyone else organize their notes and learn more about a specific topic. You can upload Google Docs, PDFs, and text files and the AI tool will instantly become an expert in that material. You can then ask it anything about those topics, beyond what your files contain. It’s a handy free tool to use when exploring something new.
Since its launch in August 2023, Google has upgraded NotebookLM with various new capabilities. It can now have a spirited discussion between two AI speakers on any given topic, like a podcast. The latest update makes the tool smarter and more useful. You can now ask NotebookLM to summarize a Google Slides presentation or give it a web URL to explain its content in detail.
With Gemini 1.5 Pro’s native multimodal capabilities, it can answer questions about images, charts, and diagrams in your sources. Its responses also include citations to images and supporting passages in your sources, so you can double-check the AI-generated content. Additionally, NotebookLM can convert files into useful formats like FAQs, Briefing Docs, or Study Guides for a high-level understanding.
Google has also increased the number of sources users can upload to a notebook or project. It’s a ten-fold increase from 5 to 50. Each source can be 500,000 words long—that’s a lot of information to learn about any topic from scratch. Note that NotebookLM is a closed system. It cannot search the web for additional information. It will take your file and teach you more about it from its knowledge.
The AI tool is now available globally in more than 100 languages
All of these additions make NotebookLM more useful for researchers and students. Fittingly, Google has expanded the AI tool’s availability to over 200 countries and territories around the world. The platform’s UI is available in 107 languages, while it can read and identify documents or websites in 38 languages. Google may add support for more languages in the coming months. You can access NotebookLM here.
