Google’s NotebookLM is one of the most powerful use cases for AI

Google's free NotebookLM has made significant improvements to its AI-powered service, allowing users to customize its popular feature of AI-generated audio summaries to focus on specific topics, target audiences, or documents. NotebookLM is a web-based AI service that helps users draw insights and learn from notes, documents, links, and recordings by analyzing the sources they upload. The service has recently improved its features, including the ability to use it in 200 countries, upload more files, and ask questions about images, charts, or diagrams. NotebookLM can turn anything users upload into an AI-generated podcast episode, featuring a conversation between two AI voices, and the quality of the voices and AI summarization is so good that it can be mistaken for human hosts. The service is available in English only, and the audio overviews are mostly seven to 15 minutes long. To get started, users can sign up for free at notebooklm.google.com and create a new notebook by adding Google Docs, PDFs, text files, YouTube links, or audio files. NotebookLM's AI can generate overviews of the material in each notebook, and users can ask specific questions about their materials or start with default resources. The service also allows users to create customized audio posts, and its creator, Steven Johnson, suggests using it to create a master notebook, project-specific notebooks, and audio overviews to review the week. Some new ways to use NotebookLM include creating a collection of favorite quotes or reading highlights, an AI-enabled journal, and turning class or reporting notes into AI-powered idea seeds. However, NotebookLM has some limitations, including being labeled as an "experimental" service, not working with Google Sheets or other data formats, and not having a mobile app. Additionally, the service is only available to people 18 and older, and users should be cautious about uploading private material.