Google’s NotebookLM provides a dozen options alongside its U.S. launch

Google has officially launched NotebookLM for the US beginning immediately. The AI-powered pocket book app is a part of the corporate’s Experimental Labs incubator, and it initially debuted at Google I/O 2023 to a small variety of beta testers. It combines the duty of taking notes with the superior capabilities of LLMs, leveraging Google’s recently announced GPT-4 competitor, Gemini.

NotebookLM is just out there to people within the US who’re 18 and up. If that sounds such as you, and also you wish to attempt it, head to notebooklm.google.com and take a look at the instrument. You may must check in along with your Google account in case you aren’t already.

How does NotebookLM work?

As said, it combines note-taking together with AI. There are a number of important elements of NotebookLM. They embody the pocket book, notes, sources, and an AI chatbot. They work collectively as a way to enhance your note-taking expertise. Not less than, that is what Google is hoping for.

You begin by making a pocket book. Inside, you’ll be able to take common notes, as you see within the screenshot above. There may be additionally a sidebar the place you’ll be able to add supply materials. I used an outdated benchmark doc from my Google Drive there. Alongside the underside, you might have the NotebookLM AI chatbot. That is all housed within the unique pocket book and every pocket book has its personal house for notes, sources, and the chatbot.

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From there, every thing works kind of as you’ll anticipate. You’ll be able to add notes that include no matter data you need. When you add sources, you’ll be able to ask the chatbot questions on these sources. It will additionally counsel questions in case you’re having hassle realizing what to ask. Within the instance screenshot above, it desires me to ask in regards to the general benchmark rating for my ASUS G75VW laptop computer that I owned a few years in the past.

There is not an official app for smartphones or something like that. For now, it is solely out there by means of Google’s web site, however you’ll be able to go to that website in your smartphone, and it nonetheless works usually.

New options for NotebookLM

Joe Hindy / Pocket-lint

Along with the launch, Google boasts that it is added over a dozen new features to the app. These options are widespread throughout the app, so let’s go over every of them.

1. Elevated supply restrict – Notebooks can have as much as 20 sources.
2. Elevated phrase depend (for sources) – Sources added to a pocket book could be as much as 200,000 phrases.
3. Write particular person notes – Including a primary observe will create an unbiased observe as a substitute of including the observe to an present pocket book.
4. Noteboard – Now you can see your written and saved notes pinned to the Noteboard house above the chat field.
5. Save chat responses as notes – NotebookLM’s AI chat responses could be pinned to the noteboard for later reference.
6. Citations saved to notes – If you save AI chat responses as notes, they are going to retain their unique citations.
7. Bounce to quotation in supply – If you click on on the quotation quantity in a chat response or a saved observe, NotebookLM will take you on to the unique quote within the supply.
8. Increase/collapse supply part – It’s now attainable to cover the supply if you wish to deal with simply note-taking.
9. Focus the AI on chosen sources – It isn’t attainable to speak with AI about particular sources in your pocket book by choosing them individually within the supply sidebar.
10. Supply guides built-in into particular person sources – Supply guides, together with summaries and key matters, now seem on the high of every supply within the supply sidebar.
11. Shared notebooks – Enabled collaboration in each viewer and editor modes, much like the way it works in Google Drive or Google Hold.
12. Instructed questions – NotebookLM suggests followup questions primarily based in your latest dialog historical past with the chat AI.
13. PDF assist – Now you can add PDF recordsdata as sources in NotebookLM. PDFs could be as much as 100MB in dimension or the aforementioned 200,000-word restrict.
14. Copied textual content assist – Now you can copy and paste textual content to create a brand new supply and add or edit the title when creating it.
15. Instance notebooks – Google added some instance notebooks, so you’ll be able to see and take a look at how NotebookLM works earlier than creating your individual.

Google can also be including some extra options subsequent week, together with the flexibility to mix notes, obtain constructive criticism from NotebookLM, summarize a number of notes, create outlines, create research guides, and extra.

Within the short-term, no less than, it is unlikely that NotebookLM will usurp the function Google Hold performs within the firm’s software program portfolio. Nonetheless, with the race to AI being as aggressive because it’s ever been, it would not be terribly surprising to see a few of these options find yourself in different Google apps and even spun off right into a full-blown app of its personal sometime.