NotebookLM updates Business to Plus with more audio, lets all users interact with AI hosts

Google Expanded access to its popular commercial version NotebookLM The app, now called NotebookLM Plus, is targeted at businesses, teams and individuals who rely on the app’s research tools.

The company has also updated a podcast-like audio summary feature that allows users to interact with an AI host and ask questions out loud.

Research tools allow people to collect information into “notebooks” and ask questions based on answers from source materials. Launched in July last year while previewing. It proved popular and became Generally available in December. Google said that NotebookLM was originally built using Gemini 1.5 and has now been upgraded using the Google 2.0 Flash experimental version.

After the Google team noticed the many different use cases for NotebookLM, including many enterprise projects, the company launched NotebookLM Plus for businesses, teams, and individuals who regularly use the application. NotebookLM Plus will have five times the number of audio overviews, notebooks, and sources per notebook.

Advanced users can also customize the style and tone of notebooks, share notebooks with team members, and view usage analytics. Google says it’s also adding more privacy and security features.

NotebookLM Plus is available through Google Workspace or Google proxy space. Next year, NotebookLM Plus will be included with Google One AI Premium subscriptions.

Google announced the then-name NotebookLM Business October serves as a pilot program for new business-focused uses of the app.

audio interaction

Audio overview, users can generate audio conversations based on the information in the notebook, Came out in September and became an instant hit. The podcast nature of audio provides a way to help people digest complex information through a conversation between two people, and is proving extremely popular.

The tool typically hosts two AI-generated chats about information in a notebook; now NotebookLM users can use voice to chime in and ask questions to get more details or guide the conversation. Users can create a new message overview, click the “Interact” button, and then click “Join” while listening, and the AI ​​moderator will call the user to ask questions.

Interaction with the AI ​​summary host only applies to new message profiles, not existing message profiles.

Google warned in a statement Blog article Interaction with the audio overview is still experimental, and “moderators may also pause awkwardly before responding or” [may] Occasionally bugs are introduced.

Former NotebookLM product lead Raiza Martin told VentureBeat that Google will Introduce more control and interaction with the message summary.

new look

Google redesigned NotebookLM to help users “better manage content and ask the AI ​​interface questions about its source.”

The new look introduces three panels: the “Source” panel, used to display all files or documents uploaded to NotebookLM; the chat panel, used to access the Gemini chat box to ask for data sources; the Studio panel, used to create study guides and presentation documents and message summary.

“From the beginning, we wanted NotebookLM to be a tool that made it easy for you to go from asking questions to reading material to capturing your own thoughts. Today, we’re introducing a new design that makes it easier than ever to Switch between different activities in a unified interface,” Google said in a blog post.

corporate interests

Since its launch, NotebookLM has been used in a variety of ways, even in the enterprise space. Some even claim It is the “CRM killer”.

Users posted on social media the different ways they use NotebookLM. Sam Lessin, former VP of Product at Meta and General Partner at Slow Ventures, Say his company on X Use NotebookLM instead of CRM.

Martin previously told VentureBeat that her team saw many users start sharing notebooks with others, allowing some notebooks to become repositories of data around company policies or project research.