Hidden power of a Gen AI research assistant - Google NotebookLM

Research gathering has always been a balancing act between capturing various information sources and organizing them effectively. Google’s NotebookLM changes this dynamic by bringing AI-powered capabilities to your research-gathering workflow.

This innovative Gen AI tool transforms how you interact with your notes, offering smart summarization, intelligent search, and seamless integration with your existing documents. Unlike manual methods of gathering and summarizing information, NotebookLM understands context and helps you make connections across your information.

A Valuable Gen AI Tool for Summarizing Multiple Research Sources

NotebookLM is an invaluable tool that helped me combine multiple papers , audio recordings, and podcasts into a concise summary. Unlike other AI chatbots, this AI tool gives you control over the information sources used. You can provide specific sources as input for the AI-generated summary.

This blog post walks you through some of the features and my feedback on the use of NotebookLM.

Understanding NotebookLM's Core Features

Powered by Google's Gen AI Gemini Language model, NotebookLM is your AI-powered research assistant, helping you process and understand complex information.

Key capabilities and limitations

NotebookLM excels at processing multiple document formats:

• Google Docs and Slides

• PDFs and web URLs

• YouTube videos

• Direct text input

• Audio files

For free users, the platform supports up to 50 sources per notebook with an impressive total capacity of 25 million words, and for NotebookLM Plus users, they’ve now added an impressive capability of 300 sources (150 million words). However, it's worth noting that NotebookLM takes snapshots of documents when uploaded, meaning changes to original files won't automatically sync.

Note: This tool is listed as experimental by Google. If you have mission-critical work, this tool may not be suitable for you. As an experimental product, it does not guarantee stability and reliability. While Google aims for a smooth experience, experimental products are more prone to errors, crashes, or unexpected behavior. For example I found that on occasion, uploading PDF sources would not work and there was no explanation as to why. Then the next day the PDF source was uploaded without any issues.

Additionally, while a tool is in an experimental state Google may choose to remove functionality that they consider unnecessary. If you have built a dependency on that function and they remove it, you’re on your own to find another way to perform the fun similar function. Overall, I found it to be reliable and it offers many great features that I use when researching a topic.

Setting up your first notebook

Getting started with NotebookLM follows a straightforward process:

1. Access NotebookLM through your Google account

2. Click the "+ Add Source" button in the left panel

3. Choose your preferred source format

4. Upload your documents

5. Begin interacting with the AI assistant.

The platform is user-friendly and features an integrated tutorial notebook titled “Introduction to NotebookLM”. This built-in guide ensures a smooth onboarding experience, especially for first-time users unfamiliar with the system.

Testing various methods to interact with the data

For my testing of the platform I used 31 sources from podcasts and published papers about aging and Alzheimer’s. The podcasts did not have published transcriptions so the Gemini LM had to transcribe the content from the video and audio sources. It did a thorough job of correctly transcribing the audio and video files.

There are various methods to interact with the data, and depending on what your goal is, you may find some approaches suit your needs more than others.

The UI allows you to choose what approach you prefer or what fits the needs of what you are using the tool for. The Chat panel enables AI-powered discussions with inline citations. The Studio panel lets you generate various content types, including Study guides, Briefing doc, FAQs, timeline, and Audio Overview.

The standout feature called “Audio Overview”, creates engaging podcast-style discussions between AI hosts. This is an interesting feature for those who would rather listen to a discussion summarizing the content vs reading a brief. I found it entertaining to listen to, and it did a fairly good job summarizing some of the main points from the source documents. If you have multiple sources it does tend to pick one of the sources to use in the audio overview. However, if you know a particular source input that you want to focus on it allows you to guide the generation of the audio overview to focus on that source. I tried this with a test using 31 source inputs, and it did a fine job of generating the audio to highlight particular input in the sources that I wanted.

They have also recently added a useful feature to the audio overview, called “interactive mode”, which allows you to interrupt the audio overview and ask more in-depth questions about specific points mentioned in the dialogue.

While this audio overview feature adds a new dimension to content consumption, it currently is only available with English-speaking AI hosts.

For collaborative work, NotebookLM enables real-time sharing with other users. Changes made by one person are instantly visible to all collaborators with editor access, making it especially valuable for team research and group study sessions.

I tried the various tools available, and my personal preference was to first generate and read the briefing document and then use the chat feature to dive deeper into specific points. The chat allows you to further query the data to ask clarifying questions and engage in a dialogue that allows you to obtain deeper explanations of certain points made in the briefing document.

You can see in the example below where I dug deeper into the topic of Alzheimer’s and the effects of different diets on the amyloid beta levels.

If you have the NotebookLM Plus account, there are advanced chat settings that allow you to customize your notebook by choosing a preferred response style: 'Guide', 'Analyst', or creating a custom style based on your needs. This feature is handy, but I found that the base default chat interface does a good job of allowing for a further understanding of the source material.

The Importance of Citations in the Gen AI Chat Interface

The citations in the chat interface play a crucial role in allowing users to thoroughly examine and validate the data provided. By maintaining context across selected sources, the chat functionality enables users to explore connections between different documents. Additionally, the citations provided serve as a means to verify the accuracy of the information presented. NotebookLM has the reminder "NotebookLM can be inaccurate, please double-check its responses." Therefore, it's crucial that you check the original material, and the citations are a key feature that allows you to do this checking

Creating an Effective Source Organization System

Setting up an organized digital workspace is crucial for making the most of NotebookLM's capabilities. Let's explore how to create a system that keeps your research and notes perfectly organized.

Source management strategies

When working on a long term project, it is crucial to consider a source management approach. NotebookLM offers support for multiple source types, each with its own specific limitations that need to be taken into account.

Each source can contain up to 500,000 words or 200MB for uploaded files. When managing sources:

• Keep sources updated by manually re-syncing Google Docs and Slides

• Monitor YouTube sources, as they auto-delete after 30 days if videos become private

• Maintain original files in Google Drive for easy updates

Connecting with Google Workspace

Of course since this is a tool from Google it naturally fits into the Google ecosystem, offering direct integration with Google Workspace tools. The platform creates instant copies of your Google Docs and Slides when imported, ensuring your original files remain untouched.

For enterprise users, NotebookLM Plus offers enhanced features with five times more storage capacity for notebooks and sources.

Importing notes from other platforms

When importing content, NotebookLM handles up to 500,000 words per source. That provides a large amount of content to be imported. The platform processes your uploads instantly, creating comprehensive source guides that include:

• Content summaries

• Key topic identification

• Suggested questions

• Inline citations

For YouTube content and audio files, NotebookLM transcribes the material automatically, making it searchable alongside your text-based sources.

Maintaining sync across tools

While NotebookLM creates snapshots of imported documents, it doesn't automatically track changes to original files. To maintain current information:

1. Monitor the "Click to sync with Google Drive" button that appears when source files are updated

2. Re-upload local files when they've been modified

3. Keep source documents under the 50,000-word limit per file for optimal performance

For team environments, NotebookLM enables real-time collaboration with edit tracking. Enterprise users benefit from additional privacy features, ensuring uploaded content and queries remain within the organization's trust boundary.

Tip: When working with multiple sources, toggle the checkmarks in the source panel to control which documents the AI considers when answering your questions. This helps maintain focus and relevance in your research process.

Effective source documentation

Managing sources effectively requires understanding NotebookLM's capabilities.

What I especially like in this tool is the ability to combine your own material together with other public material to analyze and combine the content. For example, you are working on a research paper, and you want to now combine it with other publicly available material. Using your material as another source for the analysis is easy to do, so that you end up with a combined summary of all the material.

Implementing Privacy and Security Measures

Security and privacy form the foundation of NotebookLM's design, ensuring your valuable research and notes remain protected. Understanding these features helps you make informed decisions about how to safeguard your information.

Data protection strategies

NotebookLM takes a strong stance on data privacy - your personal information and uploaded content are never used to train AI models. For enterprise users, NotebookLM Enterprise provides additional protection by keeping data within your Google Cloud project, preventing external sharing.

The platform implements several key security measures:

• Data isolation within your Google Cloud environment

• Compliance with Google Cloud Terms of Service

• Multi-region availability in the US

• Strict access controls through IAM roles

Enterprise Protection: NotebookLM Enterprise users benefit from enhanced security features, including Cloud-compliant environments and data containment within specific Google Cloud projects.

Managing shared notebooks

NotebookLM offers flexible sharing options while maintaining strict security controls. Personal Gmail accounts can share notebooks with up to 50 individual users. while enterprise accounts enable unlimited sharing within the organization.

When sharing notebooks, you can assign two permission levels:

• Viewer Access: Allows read-only capabilities for sources and notes

• Editor Access: Enables adding/removing sources and notes, but restricts notebook deletion and sharing controls.

To maintain security when collaborating, you can revoke access at any time through the Share menu. Enterprise users benefit from additional controls, as notebooks can only be shared with users within the same Google Cloud project.

Backup and recovery procedures

Since it’s still an experimental tool it currently doesn't offer automatic recovery for deleted notes. This is the nature of experimental tools where it may not meet the requirements of a enterprise level offering. Therefore, it’s crucial to implement your own backup strategy:

1. Regular Exports: Save important notes and research periodically

2. Source Management: Maintain original documents in Google Drive

3. Version Control: Keep dated copies of critical notebooks

4. Access Documentation: Track shared permissions and access levels

However, for enterprise users, NotebookLM Enterprise integrates with Google Cloud's backup and disaster recovery systems, providing additional data protection options. This ensures business continuity and data preservation for organizational users.

You need to consider the sharing of notebooks when working with sensitive information. Shared notebooks allow viewers access to all source documents within that notebook. Therefore, you must decide if some source material should be separated into different notebooks according to the information shared with various teams.

Conclusion

NotebookLM is an innovative Generative AI-powered research solution that revolutionizes how we manage and organize information. With its extensive features, seamless integration with Google Workspace, and strong security measures, this tool effectively serves individual researchers and enterprise teams.

If you use NotebookLM within an enterprise or large team, your success relies on creating clear organizational systems and maintaining consistent workflows. Regular source management, smart categorization, and proper security practices ensure your digital workspace remains productive and secure.

NotebookLM works best when treated as an active research partner rather than just a storage solution. Make time to explore its Gen AI capabilities, organize your sources regularly, and build systematic note-taking habits. These practices will help you create a reliable knowledge management system that grows with your needs.