Google hasofficially launchedNotebookLM for the US starting today. The AI-powered notebook app is part of the company’s Experimental Labs incubator, and it originally debuted atGoogle I/O 2023to a small number of beta testers. It combines the task of taking notes with the advanced capabilities of LLMs, leveragingGoogle’s recently announced GPT-4 competitor, Gemini.
NotebookLM is only available to folks in the US who are 18 and up. If that sounds like you, and you want to try it, head tonotebooklm.google.comand check out the tool. You’ll need to sign in with your Google account if you aren’t already.
How does NotebookLM work?
As stated, it combines note-taking along with AI. There are several main parts of NotebookLM. They include the notebook, notes, sources, and an AI chatbot. They work together in order to improve your note-taking experience. At least, that’s what Google is hoping for.
You start by creating a notebook. Inside, you can take regular notes, as you see in the screenshot above. There is also a sidebar where you can upload source material. I used an old benchmark document from my Google Drive there. Along the bottom, you have the NotebookLM AI chatbot. This is all housed in the original notebook and each notebook has its own space for notes, sources, and the chatbot.
Google launches Gemini AI, its answer to GPT-4, and you can try it now
Gemini AI is here to take on GPT-4, with support for multiple forms of data input, like text, images, video, and audio. And you can try it now.
From there, everything works more or less as you would expect. You can add notes that contain whatever information you want. Once you upload sources, you can ask the chatbot questions about those sources. It’ll also suggest questions if you’re having trouble knowing what to ask. In the example screenshot above, it wants me to ask about the overall benchmark score for my ASUS G75VW laptop that I owned many years ago.
There isn’t an official app for smartphones or anything like that. For now, it’s only available through Google’s website, but you can visit that site on your smartphone, and it still works normally.
New features for NotebookLM
In addition to the launch, Google boasts that it’s addedover a dozen new featuresto the app. These features are widespread across the app, so let’s go over each of them.
Google is also adding some more features next week, including the ability to combine notes, receive constructive criticism from NotebookLM, summarize multiple notes, create outlines, create study guides, and more.
In the short-term, at least, it’s unlikely that NotebookLM will usurp the role Google Keep plays in the company’s software portfolio. However, with the race to AI being as aggressive as it’s ever been, it wouldn’t be terribly shocking to see some of these features end up in other Google apps or even spun off into a full-blown app of its own someday.
