Google on Thursday introduced new updates to its AI note-taking and analysis assistant, NotebookLM, permitting customers to get summaries of YouTube movies and audio information and even create sharable AI-generated audio discussions, because the search large goals to broaden the use instances and attain of the instrument, which was initially launched as a undertaking at its I/O developer convention final 12 months and expanded to markets together with India, U.Okay., and over 200 international locations months after its debut for public entry within the U.S.
NotebookLM, which was initially utilized by educators and learners, has extra not too long ago seen a major shift in its person base and is now attracting extra folks in a office atmosphere.
Raiza Martin, a senior product supervisor for AI at Google Labs, stated in an unique interview that the instrument’s customers at the moment are roughly break up, with 50% being educators and learners, and the opposite half consisting of enterprise professionals.
“People are now sharing notebooks, and it’s creating a network effect,” she instructed TechCrunch.
This gave the NotebookLM group a push to introduce new options, with the hopes of enhancing its community impact and making the instrument fashionable amongst folks of various demographics.
Earlier this month, NotebookLM added Audio Overview to let customers flip their paperwork into partaking audio discussions. The most recent replace expands that have by permitting customers to share the Audio Overview generated in NotebookLM with a public URL.
To make use of the characteristic, you click on on the share icon out there on the Audio Overview generated within the instrument to get its URL, which you’ll then copy and share with others.
Martin stated that her group noticed professionals importing webpages, resumes, and even their displays on NotebookLM to generate Audio Overviews, then sharing these with their employers, colleagues, or purchasers.
NotebookLM additionally added assist for YouTube movies and audio information (resembling .mp3 and .wav) as new supply varieties, alongside its current assist for Google Docs, PDFs, textual content information, Google Slides, and webpages. The brand new options assist customers summarize key factors from YouTube movies and generate takeaways and insights from the audio recordings they’ve of their research periods or initiatives.
Martin instructed TechCrunch that since Google Labs has a small group working for NotebookLM, powered by the corporate’s multimodal giant language mannequin Gemini 1.5 Professional, each new characteristic the group provides to the instrument is predicated on person suggestions.
“What’s interesting about AI tools is that a lot of assumptions change,” she stated. “What might have been useful last year might not be useful this year.”
In June, Google expanded NotebookLM entry to over 200 international locations after launching it initially within the U.S. late final 12 months.
Martin instructed TechCrunch, with out disclosing particular numbers, that whereas NotebookLM nonetheless has a majority of its utilization within the U.S., Japan has emerged as the subsequent large marketplace for the instrument. The manager additionally underlined that a few of its customers are utilizing NotebookLM to get AI-based summarization in languages completely different from what they set on the instrument.
“In Japan particularly, we see a lot of documents that are not in Japanese, but NotebookLM is set to Japanese,” she stated. “So people are querying in their native language, using it with probably complex and dense documents in English.”
Google stated that the data customers add to NotebookLM stays personal and isn’t used to coach an AI mannequin. To entry the instrument, customers need to be not less than 18 years outdated.
Nonetheless, NotebookLM faces challenges inherent to its nature as an AI instrument. One is that if customers rely an excessive amount of on NotebookLM, they could shortly lose the behavior of studying long-form content material and analysis papers. This might additionally result in the issue of oversimplification.
Martin instructed TechCrunch that her group could be very effectively conscious of those considerations.
NotebookLM gives clickable citations from the content material customers add to let customers go deeper into the summarized notes.
“We try to encourage you to read your original text. We encourage you to double-check all the answers that come out of NotebookLM… You could read SparkNotes or the actual book; it’s always up to you,” she stated.
NotebookLM is presently restricted to the online, although Martin indicated that its cellular apps might come someday subsequent 12 months.
In the meantime, the group is busy including extra new options. These can be targeted on including extra assist on the enter aspect and new sources for outputs, Martin stated.
