NotebookLM is Good
Google's note taking app is not only useful, but can also be fun too, with the Audio overview addition being a killer feature.
I came across Google’s NotebookLM product a few weeks back and in the last few days, I’ve really been getting in to it, with some practical use cases and also some fun. NotebookLM originally started out as Project Tailwand, one of many products cooked up in Google’s Labs, and thankfully, one they decided to push on with.
In essence, NotebookLM is a notetaking app, as the name suggests, but one created from an entirely new angle. In the last few years, we’ve seen productivity note-taking apps like Quip and Notion come on the market that completely expanded what a '“document” is. These apps take the approach of offering the user a canvas, where they can add text, insert a table, or link a spreadsheet or even add various plugins. All of which is highly useful and creates a more powerful application than just a plain text editor. That said, in November 2022, Notion announced that it was adding AI capabilities into their solution. The AI was billed as a writing assistant that could be useful for writing a first draft, generating ideas, or even acting as a second pair of eyes to help you edit. However, it’s still very much a straightforward chatbot, of which there are now many variations of course.
So How Is NotebookLM Different?
As mentioned, NotbookLM is coming from quite a different angle, one that is possibly more geared to someone researching or studying a subject. Within each individual notebook, you can add up to 50 different sources, which can be written notes, website links, PDFs, and this being Google, also Sheets and Slides documents. You can think of this as similar to a scrapbook, where you might paste in all the bits of information as you come across them or create them. From here, you can prompt a question that will reference ALL the sources and provide you a summary, or answer specific questions you might pose it. And whilst the Language Model is trained on a wide corpus of text, the results it will generate are only based on the material that you have added to your notebook, and in this regard, it’s not too dissimilar to a RAG solution. Google does not use any of your content to train its models further.
When using the app, you’ll quickly come across the Notebook Guide section, which will offer you a summary of your material instantly with a prompt. It also has pre-built buttons allowing you to ask it create a Briefing Document, or a timeline, or a table of contents. Any of the responses it generates, you can save as an individual note in your notebook. However, it’s one of the most recent additions that’s one of the most interesting and unique.
Audio Overview
This feature provides you with an audio summary of your content, however it does it in the very innovative way of posing as two individuals chatting back and forth discussing the content. It feels very much like a podcast. As of today, there’s no options to adjust or any form of customisation, and it’s only offered in English, but, as it stands this is a very engaging feature.
One of the most fun things to do with this, is upload your latest CV/resume and listen back to the couple wax lyrical about your career.
Fun aside, it is a fantastic way to critique how you’re presenting your achievements.
I’ve also uploaded all of the match reports for Liverpool FC so far this season to get an overview of how the team has performed so far this year. You can have a listen to part of the audio here:
In a more sensible use of NotebookLM I’m using it for an upcoming road trip through Nevada, Utah and Arizona. I’m adding links to interesting blogs I’ve found with suggested hikes, our accommodation and also potential sightseeing spots. This is super useful, as I’m also able to share my notebook with my partner and she can add her own sources to be included.
At the beginning, I mentioned that you can add 50 individual sources, and I found I quickly got up to this limit going crazy adding every useful website that I came across. One tip here would be to add a lot of your content into a Google Doc that you can then add as one single source.
To Conclude
I’ve not been using NotebookLM for that long, but I’ve already come to the conclusion that it’s one of the more useful and creative uses of generative AI that I’ve used, packaged up into a really good solution. I’ll be intrigued to see if they start to add some options on the Audio Overview, at least being able to change the voices/accents would be a good start. Being able to get a summary across a number of sources, rather than just one piece of text is excellent for identifying trends or coming up with a common theme or idea. You can also add a youtube link, but I think it looks for the transcript rather than using the video itself and images are not yet supported. So as useful as it is today, there’s still more Google can add to improve NotebookLM even further.
