Google’s NotebookLM provides a dozen options...

Google has officially launched NotebookLM for the US beginning in the present day. 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 simply accessible to of us within the US who’re 18 and up. If that sounds such as you, and also you need to strive it, head to notebooklm.google.com and take a look at the instrument. You may have to check in along with your Google account in case you aren’t already.

How does NotebookLM work?

Joe Hindy / Google / Pocket-lint

As said, it combines note-taking together with AI. There are a number of primary components of NotebookLM. They embody the pocket book, notes, sources, and an AI chatbot. They work collectively with the intention to enhance your note-taking expertise. No less than, that is what Google is hoping for.

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 I used an outdated benchmark doc from my Google Drive there.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

Associated

Google launches Gemini AI, its answer to GPT-4, and you can try it now

Gemini AI is right here to tackle GPT-4, with assist for a number of types of knowledge enter, like textual content, pictures, video, and audio. And you’ll strive it now.

From there, all the pieces works kind of as you’ll count on. You’ll be able to add notes that include no matter data you need. When you add sources, you may ask the chatbot questions on these sources. It will additionally counsel questions in case you’re having hassle figuring out what to ask. Within the instance screenshot above, it needs 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 accessible by way of Google’s web site, however you may go to that web site 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 will be as much as 200,000 phrases.
3. Write particular person notes – Including a primary notice will create an impartial notice as a substitute of including the notice to an current pocket book.
4. Noteboard – Now you can see your written and saved notes pinned to the Noteboard area above the chat field.
5. Save chat responses as notes – NotebookLM’s AI chat responses will be pinned to the noteboard for later reference.
6. Citations saved to notes – While you save AI chat responses as notes, they’ll retain their authentic citations.
7. Bounce to quotation in supply – While you click on on the quotation quantity in a chat response or a saved notice, NotebookLM will take you on to the unique quote within the supply.
8. Develop/collapse supply part – It’s now doable to cover the supply if you wish to concentrate on simply note-taking.
9. Focus the AI on chosen sources – It isn’t doable to talk 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 subjects, now seem on the prime 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 Maintain.
12. Steered questions – NotebookLM suggests followup questions based mostly in your latest dialog historical past with the chat AI.
13. PDF assist – Now you can add PDF recordsdata as sources in NotebookLM. PDFs will 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 may see and check how NotebookLM works earlier than creating your personal.

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, a minimum of, it is unlikely that NotebookLM will usurp the function Google Maintain 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.