Six New Ways to Use Google's NotebookLM
Google's NotebookLM has long been a favorite AI tool, especially because it's free. Recent updates have added new functionalities, and this article will outline six brand new ways to use NotebookLM. If you're unfamiliar with NotebookLM, it's an AI assistant from Google that summarizes notes, files, and other materials. It answers questions based on the uploaded documents, ensuring the information is grounded in your data.
How NotebookLM Differs From Traditional Language Models
NotebookLM operates differently from traditional large language models in three key ways:
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Document-Based Responses: NotebookLM uses your uploaded documents as its source material. This makes it particularly powerful for analyzing unique data such as call logs, internal meeting analyses, and project reports.
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Closed System: NotebookLM doesn't search the internet for information, making its responses more accurate and consistently sourced from your provided materials. This eliminates concerns about AI "hallucinations."
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Diverse Output Formats: Beyond simple dialogue, NotebookLM can generate audio overviews, study guides, briefing documents, FAQs, timelines, and mind maps.
Professional Scenarios Where NotebookLM Shines
NotebookLM can be applied to a multitude of professional situations:
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Trend Forecasting: Analyze quarterly reports and competitor analyses to predict future trends.
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Strategic Planning: Develop strategic plans based on industry reports, policy documents, and case studies.
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Customer Management: Manage customer data with a NotebookLM notebook containing meeting minutes, deliverables, and call logs.
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Skill Acquisition: Upload tutorials, guides, and resources to use NotebookLM as a personalized learning assistant.
Getting Started with NotebookLM
To use NotebookLM, visit the website. (Note: Users in mainland China may need a VPN to access the service). The main page allows you to create a new notebook and upload various file types including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoints, PDFs, text files, MP3 audio, Google Docs, website links, and images. You can even record audio on the go and upload it.
Six Fantastic New Features of NotebookLM
Here are six newly added features that significantly enhance NotebookLM's capabilities:
1. Online Notebook for Summarizing and Organizing Content
Instead of relying on ChatGPT with lengthy prompts for summarizing text or books, NotebookLM's large context window makes it ideal for handling large files.
Example: Uploading the PDF of a book like "The Almanack of Naval Ravikant" and asking NotebookLM to summarize its core ideas. The system generates a summary with source citations, linking directly to the relevant sections of the book with a single click.
In addition to PDF files, you can also add content directly from Google Drive. NotebookLM allows up to 50 source documents per notebook. The word limit has been increased substantially; while previously it was 200,000 words per source, it has been updated to 500,000 words, meaning that you can now process up to 25 million words per notebook. This increase allows for greater information absorption and more precise analysis. You can ask if it can find connections within your notes. Uploading years' worth of personal notes can allow you to consult the AI on your past writing and thoughts.
2. Transforming Notes into Study Guides and Outlines
NotebookLM can help create study guides or outlines, particularly useful for writing articles or creating educational content. After uploading your notes, simply click a button to generate a comprehensive study guide including knowledge reviews, quizzes, essay questions, and key terms. You can also use it to analyze children's coursework and generate test questions and key points.
Furthermore, to avoid missing key points, the user can create briefing documents containing the most important extractions of previously summarized documents.
3. Creating Timelines and Mind Maps
NotebookLM can help you create timelines and mind maps.
Example: Uploading a Wikipedia page about ancient Egyptian history as a source and generating a timeline to view historical events in chronological order.
This is beneficial for historical contexts and sequential events. This information can then be passed to the external AI tool, Napkin AI, to create visualizations and charts from your text. You can copy your text into Napkin AI and select your preferred chart style for the copied text. Napkin AI can also be used to create mind maps.
NotebookLM now features a built-in mind map function. It allows you to understand the overall structure and key themes of your notes by turning them into mind maps. This provides a clear entry point into new topics and allows you to examine all key concepts before digging into specifics. The mind map feature includes expandable levels. You can click a branch to generate a deeper discussion with the AI.
4. Learning Assistant
Upload video tutorials from YouTube to learn about certain topics or tasks.
Example: Copy YouTube video links to NotebookLM to learn about how to use NotebookLM.
NotebookLM will answer questions without you having to watch the videos. You can upload up to 50 YouTube videos or website links. This allows you to gain a foundational understanding of an unfamiliar concept more quickly.
5. Video Meeting Summaries
NotebookLM can now also act as an assistant in creating meeting summaries. It allows for summaries of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Tencent meetings. To do this, you can upload meeting recordings or videos to YouTube, copy the link, and paste it into NotebookLM. It generates key points from the recording, providing sources with direct links to the meeting transcript.
6. Enhanced Audio Overviews with Interactive Mode
The audio overview feature, pioneered by NotebookLM, generates podcast-style dialogues summarizing content. This allows you to learn while multitasking.
Example: Turning travel information on Hokkaido, Japan, into an audio overview.
A new "Interactive Mode (Beta)" enables users to interrupt and converse with the AI speakers. While the audio overview function currently only supports English, it lets you find a topic, generate a podcast, and listen. You can then interrupt the speakers to interact further.
Conclusion
NotebookLM has significantly improved with its latest updates, particularly the expanded context window which is akin to giving the AI a "memory." This enables ongoing interaction. NotebookLM is a valuable tool for improving productivity and learning efficiency.