I Finally Gave Google’s NotebookLM A Shot; Here’s How To Use It

When Google released NotebookLM back in 2023, it was limited to only a few countries and not yet available in India and other parts of the world. In June, Google expanded its availability to over 200 countries across the globe. Now, you can use NotebookLM for free in nearly all regions without restrictions on key features. It is still labeled as experimental, but Google is continuously improving NotebookLM and I love the new additions.

First off, Google calls NotebookLM an “AI-powered research and writing assistant,” but it’s much more than that. You can upload various types of files, including PDFs, Google Docs, Google Slides, TXTs, and Markdown files. Plus, it allows you to input URLs to fetch the content directly from the internet or paste text into the source page.

You can add up to 50 sources in a single notebook. By the way, none of your uploaded files are used for training Google’s Gemini AI.

NotebookLM, powered by Google’s flagship Gemini 1.5 Pro model, analyzes all your local documents and becomes an expert on the material you have provided. Basically, NotebookLM, in a way, lets you create a custom AI chatbot that generates relevant responses from your personal notes and documents.

For students and researchers, NotebookLM is an amazing AI tool as it lets you generate new insights and find information from multiple sources in no time.

What I love about NotebookLM is that it adds inline citations to quickly find the supporting passage in a document. In addition, since Gemini 1.5 Pro is a multimodal model, it can also analyze images, diagrams, and charts from your local sources, inferring meaning from both visual and textual data. I wish this feature came to Gemini Gems, but for now, you can use NotebookLM.

Besides that, Google recently added an “Audio Overview” feature to NotebookLM which creates a podcast-style deep dive discussion on uploaded materials using AI-generated hosts. I found it exceptionally good and natural to understand key topics as if I were listening to a podcast on my personal notes.

How to Use Google’s NotebookLM

So, if you are interested in Google’s NotebookLM AI tool, here is how you can use it.

• Head over to notebooklm.google.com (visit) and sign in with your Google account.
• You don’t need a Gemini Advanced subscription to access NotebookLM. Now, click on “New notebook.”

• On the sources page, you can upload your files, connect your documents from Google Drive, or paste a URL to fetch content.

• Now, NotebookLM will analyze your documents and provide a summary.

• You can now start chatting with your documents. In each response, it adds citations from your personal notes.

• You can also create an FAQ, Study guide, Briefing document, Table of contents, and Timeline.

• Best of all, you can generate a podcast-style audio conversation using two AI hosts discussing your uploaded material.

• I uploaded one of my articles on India’s recent AI advisory. You can listen to the AI-generated podcast right below.

So, this is how you can take advantage of NotebookLM to gain new insights and find information from your personal documents and notes. The AI tool is completely free, which is the best part. In case you are looking for the best AI tools for researchers, check out our linked guide. And if you’ve any questions, drop a comment below.