Google’s NotebookLM is an experimental AI-powered tool designed to assist with note-taking, research organization, and idea generation. It leverages on Google’s gemini to assist users to interact with their documents.
- Notes summarization – I uploaded 6 web sources on the topic of history and it was able to provide a summary for me based on the information. You can upload up to 50 sources. A limitation though, you cannot upload a source url if there are copyright restrictions – I was unable to link my Linkedin posts. You can upload word, excel, pdf files, audio files and sync your google drive. You can also sync your google slides, link a youtube video or copy and paste text.
2. Text Synthesis – Next up I tested it’s abilities to synthesize the sources and provide higher level information rather than a mere summary. To my delight I was impressed by how well the AI performed. Based on the sources, I asked it to give me a summary on where all the conflicts had occurred. It ran through the sources and provided the following output below.
3. Automated question prompting – based on the sources I provided NotebookLM was able to churn out questions that I could prompt the AI for. A handy tool that is able to give different perspectives on the sources and aid with notes revision. I was also able to save the notes and keep them for future retrieval.
4. Transcribe Youtube video – I uploaded a youtube video and asked NotebookLM to provide a summary of the video and it executed it perfectly.
5. Notebook LM can create a list of FAQs based on the sources you uploaded. Very handy for revising notes and preparing for exams.
6. Timelines – NotebookLM was able to generate for me a detailed timeline based on the sources I provided. Given that my topic was on history, it allowed me to view the chain of events in chronological order. It also synthesized the sources together and gave me a bigger perspective of how the events occurred around the world.
7. Study guides – NotebookLM can help you create study guides based on the sources you provided. It will come up with a quiz and generate the answers for you. A very effective tool when revising for exams.
8. Podcasts – NotebookLM can generate podcasts for you automatically. Great for new content ideas and now you can start your very own podcast. The AI was able to synthesize the various sources and provided a higher dimensional analysis of world events, not just confined to a summary of a single source.
9. Collaboration – NotebookLM supports real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to contribute to a shared notebook, which is particularly useful for team projects.
Overall, NotebookLM is a pretty neat tool that can help you with note taking, note summarizations, generating content and can become a handy tool to help you revise your work. The wonders of AI are just mesmerizing!