Cool AI Tools: NotebookLM
A powerful tool for research, study, brainstorming, and more.
Today we’re going to do something a little different and highlight a neat AI tool. Typically we’re exploring what popular AI services like ChatGPT and Gemini can do, but there are some AI tools that are just too useful to sleep on. Google’s NotebookLM (NLM) is one of those tools that you really ought to be experimenting with if you haven’t already.
What makes NLM Unique?
NLM is an impressive tool that helps you explore and understand information from specific sources. NLM is built to help you utilize “grounded” data - data sources that you specify and provide to it – with a powerful AI model (currently Gemini 2.0) that can do neat AI stuff with it “out of the box.”
Once your NLM notebook is grounded on that data you provide it, you can interact with that data (all the sources or select sources at a time) that it will refer back to for its outputs. NLM will provide numerous citations that you can easily double check, helping you stay confident in its answers.
The basic idea is:
You upload your documents from various supported sources: PDFs, Google Docs, text files, web URLs, even audio files or YouTube videos (it transcribes them).
NotebookLM learns from your sources and uses AI to understand the content within these documents.
You interact with the grounded AI: You can ask questions about your documents, request summaries, generate outlines, create FAQs, produce study guides, all grounded in the information you provided.
You can create as many of these “Notebooks” as you’d like, each grounded in different sources. In one tool you can have numerous projects for various purposes, all accessible through the NLM dashboard (contain some constraints listed below).
You could try doing all this with an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini, but the truth is NLM is built for this work and is just going to do it better out of the box. With NLM there’s going to be less of a chance that AI brings in outside information and hallucinates.
Cost and Capabilities
NLM has a free and “Plus” version. The free version is plenty powerful, you just need a Google account to get started. The Plus version is created for pro users and built for big projects in mind. (I personally get the Plus version with my $20/mo Gemini Advanced subscription, which I’m seeing increasing value form over time.)
To give you a sense of what this means in real data and use (at least of mid-May 2025).
Getting started with NLM
To get started, I’d recommend heading to Google NotebookLM | Note Taking & Research Assistant Powered by AI and perusing the marketing material. Click “try NotebookLM” button and it should fire up a screen like this, with a nice tutorial built in. Walk through it and get comfortable with it. (You can always search for YouTube tutorial videos etc. if you get stuck)
When you click a new “Notebook” (think of these at distinct independent projects) you will see a blank notebook that looks like this:
It may look a little intimidating at first but just play around with it and you’ll get comfortable with it quickly. The build in wizard also helps. Basically, you upload your sources on the left, interact with it like a chatbot in the middle, and then create specific “notes” on the bottom right with some templates built in (Study Guide, FAQ, TimeLine, etc.) – all worth checking out.
An important and fun note: You can create audio files from each notebook (top-left corner), which generates a podcast style conversation between two AI hosts. This is a super fun feature and something you’ll want to try out!
Exploring ways to utilize NLM
Let’s explore some ways to use it. Some popular uses are:
Single Document Summarization and Q&A: Upload a document (like a news article, a short report, or a chapter from a book) and ask NLM to summarize it. From here you can pepper it with questions to better understand it or summarize it in different ways.
Ideas: Upload an instruction manual, a strategic plan, a company 10K, or a government bill and ask it for summaries, specific questions, key themes, etc. Ask it to generate a list of FAQs and answers based on the content.
Comparing Information Across Multiple Documents: Upload multiple related but distinct documents (e.g., two different articles about the same event, two versions of a proposal) and ask NLM to compare and contrast the information they contain on specific aspects.
Extracting Action Items from Meeting Notes: if you’ve started recording your meetings for AI use (and you should!) you can use NLM to transcribe the audio file and ask it to identify and list all the action items mentioned, along with who is responsible. It’s a great tool for this. At an all-week retreat? Upload multiple days content in there and it will do a great job working across session.
Analyzing Arguments in a Persuasive Text: Upload an opinion piece, an editorial, or a persuasive essay and ask NLM to identify the main arguments, the evidence used to support them, and any counterarguments mentioned. You could do this with a single piece or compare multiple sources against one another.
Creating a Study Guide from Course Materials: Upload lecture notes, readings, and any other course materials. Ask NLM to create a study guide, including key concepts, potential exam questions, and summaries of important topics. It’s built for this “out of the box.”
These are just a few but are a great place to start. Per usual, your imagination is the limit with using AI technology.
Here’s another idea. With any of the above, you could generate an audio overview file and play it while you’re out on a walk or driving to work to get smarter on your topic of choice. How cool is that?
NLM in Action
Following on our post last week about the Future of Work, let’s do further study on the future of remote work specifically. Society has been trying to figure this out in haste since 2020 or so, let’s see if we can explore some of the different ideas and arguments about its future.
These are the general steps that I would take to approach this project:
Create a new Notebook.
Add my sources (I just picked a few at random ones to start)
Start interacting with it, highlight all or some of the sources as I query. A few prompts 📝 that I used here:
Based on these sources, what are the 3-5 key predictions or trends regarding the future of remote work?
Compare and contrast the benefits and challenges of remote work.
According to the 'State of Remote Work 2025' report, what are the most significant changes in remote work adoption or employee sentiment compared to previous years (if mentioned)?
In the notes section, I use the pre-built buttons to build summaries and FAQ pages.
And of course, you can’t build a notebook without trying out the audio feature – click on this and see what you think the AI generated podcast it created: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/b7f6521c-21f3-497e-9e5d-2035a8d520d7/audio
Final Thoughts
NotebookLM is a powerful tool, when that I highly recommend you get familiar with. The more you play with it the more you’ll start thinking about how to incorporate it into your personal and professional life. Enjoy!
