Google announced NotebookLM last summer and is now expanding availability to over 200 new countries, including Canada, as well as adding new features.
NotebookLM, for those unfamiliar, was previously called ‘Project Tailwind.’ It’s a web-based platform that leverages large language models (LLMs) to aid with exploring complex material. It allows users to upload sources like research notes, interview transcripts, documents and more and then use a chat interface to ask questions about those sources. NotebookLM is source-grounded, which means it only pulls from sources that users upload and doesn’t draw from the web.
Google updated NotebookLM in several ways. It now uses Gemini 1.5 Pro and supports over 100 languages. The move to Gemini 1.5 Pro enables multi-modal understanding, which means NotebookLM should better handle sources with images, charts and diagrams. It also supports more source types, including Google Slides and web URLs. Additionally, NotebookLM can convert sources into certain formats via Notebook Guide, providing FAQ pages, briefing docs or study guides to help users interact with the content.
Inline citations are another big upgrade coming to NotebookLM. These appear in NotebookLM’s responses and link back to relevant information from the original source, which will help people fact-check the AI response and dive deeper into the source.
Google highlighted some real-world use cases for NotebookLM, such as authors using it to analyze research documents for upcoming books or journalists using it to quickly work through dense documents like city council meeting minutes. One that really stood out to me was role-playing game enthusiasts using NotebookLM to manage descriptions of fantasy worlds for games like Dungeons and Dragons.
Now that NotebookLM is available in Canada, those interested in trying it out will need to head to the website here. From there, you can get started by creating a notebook and uploading sources.
Images credit: Google
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
