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Google’s free NotebookLM made enhancements on October 17 to what has grow to be one of the vital highly effective methods to make use of AI. Now you can customise its hottest function — AI-generated audio summaries — to concentrate on particular matters, goal audiences, or paperwork.
Learn on for an up to date overview of one of many yr’s most stunning AI instruments, together with recommended methods to make use of it and some limitations.
What it’s in a nutshell: NotebookLM is a free Net-based AI service that helps you draw insights and be taught from notes, paperwork, hyperlinks, and recordings. It doesn’t do analysis on the Net or make up info. As a substitute it’s targeted completely on analyzing the sources you add.
Updates to Google’s fast-growing experiment
What’s new: Since I first lined NotebookLM, it’s improved considerably.
- Use it in 200 nations. You not must be within the U.S to affix.
- Add extra recordsdata. Now you can add all sorts of doc, hyperlinks and multimedia.
- Use Gemini’s greatest mannequin. Now you can ask questions on photos, charts, or diagrams that seem in any of the sources you add.
- Extra particular, correct citations. When NotebookLM identifies one thing in your notes or paperwork, you may click on on a quotation hyperlink to see a extra exact choice from the fabric in your personal notes.
- Be a part of as a workforce. As of Oct 17, Google is inviting companies, universities, and different organizations to join a new pilot program for workforce collaboration. It’s initially free, however will ultimately be a paid service.
New: Create personalized audio posts
Customise Audio Summaries. Right here’s one I generated to check out the model new customized immediate function. First I uploaded a YouTube recording of a workshop I led about AI for educators. Then I supplied just a few sentences of steerage to form the main focus of the audio clip, concentrating on educators skeptically interested in AI.
The way it works: NotebookLM can flip something you add into an AI-generated podcast episode. Every pocket book you create can embody certainly one of these “audio overviews” that includes a dialog between two AI voices. Right here’s an example I made by importing a submit I wrote about Perplexity.
- Human-like voices. The standard of the voices and the AI summarization is so good that once I performed a recording not too long ago for a gaggle, folks assumed the hosts have been human. Even earlier than this week’s customization enhancements, NotebookLM was producing buzz for the standard of its audio technology, as mirrored on this Twitter/X thread.
- Enthusiastic bots. NotebookLM’s algorithm instructs its AI audio hosts to be energetic. Even when given resumes and bank card receipts to summarize, the AI hosts nonetheless sound thrilled.
- English solely. NotebookLM can perceive supplies in near 100 languages, and queries in quite a few languages. The audio overviews are English-only for now due to voice-model limitations.
- Largely seven-to-Quarter-hour lengthy. You possibly can’t customise the audio size. If you happen to present transient materials you could get a 3-minute audio end result. Exhaustive texts could find yourself with 20-minute audio summaries.
get began
- Enroll at notebooklm.google.com. It’s free with no utilization limitations. Begin by exploring pattern notebooks included in your account.
- Create a brand new pocket book. You possibly can then add:
- Google Docs or Slides.
- PDFs, textual content, or Markdown recordsdata.
- YouTube or different Net hyperlinks, or audio recordsdata.
- Add as much as 50 sources into every pocket book. Every may be as much as 200mb and comprise as much as 500,000 phrases.
- Create as much as 100 notebooks. (I’ve ones for analysis, instructing, and hobbies).
Apply AI to a set of notes or paperwork
NotebookLM’s AI can generate overviews of the fabric in every pocket book. You possibly can ask particular questions on your supplies, or you can begin with some default assets.
- FAQ = Get a abstract of questions and solutions associated to your materials.
- Desk of Contents = See a roadmap of what’s in your pocket book.
- Research Information = Get quiz and essay questions and a glossary of key phrases.
- Timeline = See an ordering of occasions and a listing of individuals talked about.
- Briefing Doc = View a abstract of major themes, notable concepts, and quotes.
- Chat. You possibly can question your pocket book simply as you’ll chat with ChatGPT, Claude or another AI bot. The profit in NotebookLM is that it’s going to present a quotation to the part of a doc it relied on in answering your question.
- Noteboard. Inside every pocket book, there’s a bulletin-board type house for saving AI responses. You need to use it to mirror on new concepts, annotate passages, or save observations that emerge as you work together with the AI.
How NotebookLM’s creator suggests utilizing it
I spoke not too long ago with Steven Johnson, who helped develop NotebookLM. He’s a well-liked creator of 14 non-fiction books, who has additionally been a tech founder and serves as Editorial Director of Google Labs. He shared with me a useful strategy to benefiting from NotebookLM:
- Create a grasp pocket book. Put within the paperwork most essential to you. A pocket book can settle for about 25 million phrases, sufficient to retailer a lifetime’s price of pondering and writing. You possibly can then question that pocket book to floor your previous concepts, analysis or writings that relate to present initiatives.
- Create project-specific notebooks. Dump in your most up-to-date 10 docs, slides or different supplies and use the pocket book as a reference useful resource.
- Create an audio overview to evaluation the week. Put in transcripts of your current conferences and skim the abstract briefing and/or take heed to the overview in your commute to evaluation key conversations.
Some new methods to make use of NotebookLM
- Create a set of your favourite quotes or studying highlights. I exported my assortment of 1000’s of Readwise highlights to Google Docs, then imported these into a brand new NotebookLM.
- Now I can use AI to discover a decade’s price of passages I’ve highlighted in Kindle books, on-line articles, and podcasts.1 I can draw inspiration from these quotes and concepts in new ways in which inform my writing and instructing. Listen to an audio summary of this assortment I requested NotebookLM to personalize for me.
- Create an AI-enabled journal. Export your previous musings to make it straightforward to seek for patterns in your previous pondering.
- Flip class or reporting notes into AI-powered thought seeds. Convert something you’ve realized into an AI-enhanced pocket book. It’s straightforward to then generate examine guides, FAQs, or question the pocket book about varied themes you’ve been exploring.
Construct by yourself notes
- Make clear, critique, or broaden on notes. You possibly can spotlight any notes in your noteboard and ask for them to be clarified, critiqued, mixed, or summarized. Or you may ask for a top level view primarily based on a notice, or for it to recommend associated concepts.
- Dialogue along with your notes. Whenever you’re writing one thing or getting ready a presentation, use NotebookLM to help in exploring your supplies. Provoke a dialogue with your personal notes. This means to floor and join precious concepts in any other case hidden deep inside my notes or paperwork is what I discover most dear about NotebookLM.
- Question a person doc or a full assortment. NotebookLM generates a abstract for every supply you add. It additionally provides topic tags primarily based on the content material. You possibly can question a number of paperwork or the total pocket book.
Caveats
- NotebookLM is labeled an “experimental” service, so Google may doubtlessly pull the plug anytime.2 This week’s announcement of a brand new paid enterprise service could also be signal that the corporate envisions a sustainable future for this service.
- NotebookLM doesn’t but work with Google Sheets or different knowledge codecs.
- No cell app, although the cell Net model works properly for easy queries.
- Accessible solely to folks 18 and older.
- Google doesn’t prepare its fashions in your materials. However when you’re skeptical in regards to the firm, keep away from importing personal materials.
This text is republished with permission from Surprise Instruments, a e-newsletter that helps you uncover probably the most helpful websites and apps. Subscribe here.