Questions about Google's source-grounded research assistant, renamed Gemini Notebook, answered in plain English.
Google's AI research assistant, now folded into the Gemini family (Gemini Notebook in newer materials). You upload sources - PDFs, documents, slides, links, videos - and it answers questions grounded only in that material, citing the exact passages it used.
The standard version is free with a Google account. NotebookLM Plus, bundled with Google AI plans and some Workspace editions, lifts the caps on notebooks, sources, queries and Audio Overviews.
A podcast-style discussion between two AI hosts generated from your sources, summarising the key topics as an objective reflection of the material. Newer options include video overviews and interactive playback you can interrupt with questions.
Source grounding. ChatGPT is a general assistant answering from training and the web; NotebookLM answers strictly from documents you provide and shows its citations. Use ChatGPT to draft and brainstorm; use NotebookLM to master a body of material.
Google says notebook content is not used to directly train its foundation models unless you provide feedback. On consumer accounts, feedback can include your sources, queries and outputs for human review and product improvement. Workspace and Education uploads, queries and responses are not human-reviewed or used to train AI models, even with feedback. Only upload material you are allowed to store online.
Studying from notes, digesting long reports, comparing papers or contracts, building briefings from a source pack, and auto-generating study guides, FAQs and timelines from your own documents.
Yes - it is strong for internal knowledge: put a project's documents in a notebook and the team can query them with citations. If documents are client-confidential, check your privacy obligations before uploading to any cloud service.
Visit notebooklm.google.com with a Google account, create a notebook, drop in sources (files, Google Docs, web links, YouTube, pasted text) and start asking questions - or generate an Audio Overview and listen.
