Google’s NotebookLM means that you can experiment with an AI chat system targeted on sources you choose. The instrument leverages Google Gemini, a extremely succesful AI system, not solely to generate chat responses based mostly in your sources but in addition that will help you manage and discover the content material inside your sources.
For instance, you might add a number of traces to a pocket book, then use NotebookLM to generate a personalized examine information based mostly on a selected choice of these notes.
In September 2024, NotebookLM added an choice to create an audio overview, which builds a podcast-style dialog drawn out of your sources. This mixture of AI instruments, together with chat and notes-related options, makes NotebookLM one of the vital efficient instruments for exploring concepts present in a targeted set of sources.
Customers of NotebookLM should:
- Be no less than 18 years outdated.
- Have a Google account.
- Be in one of many 180 areas the place the Gemini API is on the market.
NotebookLM is free to make use of, and Google doesn’t use your knowledge to coach NotebookLM. Nonetheless, NotebookLM is experimental and, like most AI companies, could typically present incorrect info. 5 core capabilities of Google’s NotebookLM — as of September 2024 — are coated beneath. Go to NotebookLM and sign up with a Google account to get began.
SEE: Google Chrome: Safety and UI suggestions you want to know (TechRepublic Premium)
How do you employ Google’s NotebookLM?
Whereas Google emphasizes chat and different AI-powered options of NotebookLM, the power to work with notes alongside sources can be helpful. It additionally has the power to create an audio overview, offering a unique method to course of your content material.
Add sources
After creating a brand new pocket book and naming it, you might add as much as 50 sources. These sources can embrace numerous content material, together with Google Docs, Google Slides, texts, PDFs, and net hyperlinks. Nonetheless, every supply should be not more than 500,000 phrases lengthy. For context, that’s almost the mixed phrase rely of the three “Lord of the Rings” books by J.R.R. Tolkein. Subsequently, file size probably is not going to be a priority for many enterprise or college makes use of.
Moreover, NotebookLM contains picture understanding, which suggests it might course of and analyze info in pictures included in your sources.
Entry a supply abstract
Choose any supply from the left-side record, and NotebookLM will show two AI-generated sections — a abstract and key subjects — above the supply content material. The abstract seeks to seize the core ideas of the supply in a number of sentences. In distinction, the important thing subjects might be seen as auto-generated prompts: Choose a key matter from the record, and NotebookLM begins a brand new chat. For instance, a click on on a key matter of “Collaborative instruments” begins a chat with a “Talk about collaborative instruments” immediate.
Chat along with your sources
NotebookLM generates chat responses based mostly in your sources, making it an efficient instrument to interrogate a set of paperwork, slides, and hyperlinks. Ask a query, and the generated response could embrace info out of your sources, with numbered citations within the response that hyperlink on to the associated content material.
Undecided what to ask? Choose any of the steered prompts that show above the immediate field. Need to edit a response for later use? Choose the copy button within the decrease left, then paste the response in any commonplace textual content subject elsewhere — however please be aware that citations are omitted whenever you copy-and-paste a response on this method. You additionally could save a response to a be aware.
Make notes
There are two methods so as to add notes in NotebookLM:
- To make a brand new be aware manually, choose the “Add be aware” icon, after which add your textual content. As soon as saved, you might later choose and edit the title and contents of any manually created be aware.
- To avoid wasting any AI generated chat response to a be aware, choose the “Save to notice” button within the decrease nook of a chat response. Notes created from an AI chat response could also be chosen and considered later, however the system received’t allow you to edit the generated content material within the be aware.
Creating and managing notes alongside supply content material affords a functionality that many college students, writers, and researchers may discover useful. Choose the checkbox within the upper-right nook of a number of notes, and NotebookLM shows text-buttons with actions to tackle the notes.
The be aware motion buttons can:
- Summarize the chosen notes.
- Recommend associated concepts.
- Create a examine information.
- Create an overview.
- Mix the chosen notes right into a single be aware.
Generate guides — together with audio!
The Pocket book information possibility — positioned within the lower-right space of the show — offers entry to a abstract of all sources, together with choices to generate a number of forms of paperwork or an audio overview of your sources. The forms of paperwork that NotebookLM can create are just like the be aware actions: FAQ, Examine Information, Desk of Contents, Timeline, and a Briefing Doc. When you choose considered one of these, the system generates a brand new be aware that incorporates the kind of content material requested.
Choose the “audio overview” possibility for the system to create a podcast-style dialogue with simulated voices about your content material. The overview could take a while to generate. After requesting it, you may shut your browser and proceed with different duties. Even when an audio overview is prepared, it takes a little bit of time to load the generated audio. The generated audio does a formidable job of portraying hosts conversing about your content material.
Audio overview selectively focuses on parts of your content material. Consider it as a small sampler of your sources fairly than complete protection of each element. For instance, in considered one of my assessments involving 4 paperwork and two displays, the generated audio overview ran for greater than 9 minutes. The dialog captured no less than three main elements of the content material but in addition coated some minor particulars {that a} human editor probably would have omitted.
