Google Gemini introduces a highly beneficial feature that NotebookLM has offered for years

Komal Patil June 28, 2023

Google’s Gemini offers a wide range of capabilities, including live translation, assisting with your emails, and enabling a seamless transition from ChatGPT and other chatbots. Nevertheless, one challenge that users faced was the difficulty in managing conversations and organizing them effectively.

The leading search engine has successfully addressed the issue by introducing ‘Notebooks’ support in Gemini, providing a specific area to manage your conversations and documents, which also synchronize with NotebookLM. This development puts Google on par with ChatGPT’s comparable feature known as Projects. Additionally, Gemini and NotebookLM are already integrated to some extent, as users can include NotebookLM as a source within Gemini.

Google is introducing notebooks for Google AI Ultra/Pro/Plus subscribers on the web. This feature will soon be available on mobile devices and in additional countries throughout Europe, as well as for free users, in the upcoming weeks. Google specifies that notebooks are not accessible to users under 18 years of age, nor to Workspace and Education accounts.

Nonetheless, Google has grander ambitions for the notebooks, stating that users should “consider notebooks as personal knowledge repositories integrated across Google products, beginning with Gemini.” The company also mentioned that it is developing additional notebook functionalities for Gemini moving forward.

If you hold a Google AI subscription, you can experiment with notebooks in Gemini by selecting the “New notebook” option located in the side panel. You have the ability to transfer your earlier chats into a notebook, incorporate files such as documents and PDFs, and provide tailored instructions that are specific to that notebook.

Notebooks provide a seamless connection between Gemini and NotebookLM. For example, any source you include in Gemini will automatically show up in NotebookLM and the other way around. Even if you initiated a notebook in Gemini, you can utilize the sources with features available in NotebookLM, like Cinematic Video Overviews and Infographics.

For instance, if you are a student, consider compiling your class notes into a notebook and utilizing NotebookLM to generate a Cinematic Video Overview. The following day, launch the Gemini app and request it to draft an essay outline based on that specific content,” Google mentioned in a blog post introducing the feature.

Notebooks allow you to consolidate related conversations in a single location, but their greater advantage lies in anchoring AI responses to your own materials while also utilizing online resources when necessary. It is worth noting that Notebooks have been an essential component of NotebookLM since it was first introduced.