Google announced new updates to its AI-powered note-taking and research assistant, NotebookLM, introducing features like summaries of YouTube videos and audio files, along with the ability to create shareable AI-generated audio discussions. The aim is to expand the tool’s use cases and increase its reach. Initially launched as a project during Google’s I/O developer conference last year, NotebookLM has since become available in over 200 countries, including India and the U.K., after being first released for public access in the U.S.
Originally designed for educators and students, NotebookLM has recently seen a shift in its user base. According to Raiza Martin, a senior product manager for AI at Google Labs, the user demographic is now evenly split, with 50% being educators and learners, and the other half business professionals.
“People are now sharing notebooks, creating a network effect,” Martin told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. This growing user base motivated the NotebookLM team to introduce new features, with the goal of enhancing its popularity across different user groups.
One of the recent features, Audio Overview, allows users to convert documents into audio discussions. With the latest update, users can now share these AI-generated Audio Overviews via a public URL, making it easier to distribute their content. Users can simply click the share icon on the Audio Overview to generate a URL, which they can copy and share with others.
Martin noted that professionals have started uploading documents such as resumes, web pages, and presentations into NotebookLM to generate Audio Overviews, which they then share with colleagues, clients, or employers.
The new update also introduces support for YouTube videos and audio files (like .mp3 and .wav), expanding the tool’s capabilities beyond its existing support for Google Docs, PDFs, Google Slides, and web pages. Now, users can summarize key points from YouTube videos or extract insights from audio recordings related to study sessions or projects.
Powered by Google’s multimodal Gemini 1.5 Pro large language model, NotebookLM’s development is heavily driven by user feedback. “What’s interesting about AI tools is that a lot of assumptions change,” Martin explained. “What was useful last year might not be this year.”
Since expanding access to over 200 countries in June, NotebookLM has gained significant traction, particularly in Japan, which Martin cited as a key emerging market, though most usage still comes from the U.S. She also noted that many users in Japan use the tool to summarize documents in English, even though the interface is set to Japanese.
Google emphasizes that the data users upload to NotebookLM remains private and is not used to train AI models. The tool is restricted to users aged 18 and over.
However, challenges persist. One potential drawback of relying heavily on AI tools like NotebookLM is that users might become less inclined to engage with long-form content or research papers, leading to oversimplification. Martin said the team is aware of these concerns, and NotebookLM includes clickable citations to allow users to explore the original sources of the summarized content.
“We try to encourage you to read your original text. We encourage you to double-check all the answers that come out of NotebookLM… It’s like SparkNotes versus reading the actual book—it’s always up to you,” she said.
Currently, NotebookLM is limited to web access, but Martin hinted that mobile apps could be released sometime next year. In the meantime, the team continues to focus on adding more features, particularly around expanding input and output sources.
