Google prolonged access to the popular business version NotebookLM application, now called NotebookLM Plus, aimed at enterprises, teams and individuals using the application’s research tools.
The company has also updated its podcast-like audio review feature, which allows users to interact with AI hosts and ask questions aloud.
The research tool, which allows you to collect information in “notebooks” and ask questions with answers from the source material, launched in July last yr in a preview version. It proved popular and became widely available in December. Originally built with Gemini 1.5, NotebookLM has been updated with Google’s experimental version of Flash 2.0, Google said.
After the Google team noticed many different use cases for NotebookLM – including many enterprise projects – the company launched NotebookLM Plus for enterprises, teams and individuals who use the app often. NotebookLM Plus will have five times more audio overviews, notebooks and sources per notebook.
Premium users can even customize the style and tone of notebooks, share them with team members, and view usage analytics. Google said it has also added more privacy and safety features.
NotebookLM Plus could be accessed via Google Workspace or Google Agentspace. Next yr, NotebookLM Plus shall be included in the Google One AI Premium subscription.
In October, Google announced what was then called NotebookLM Business as a pilot program for recent business applications.
Sound interaction
Audio Reviews, which allows users to generate audio conversations based on information in the notebook, was released in September and became an easy hit. The podcast nature of audio allowed people to digest complex information through conversation between two people and proved very talked-about.
The tool often featured two AI-generated hosts talking about the information contained in the notebooks; now NotebookLM users can chime in and ask questions via voice to get more details or direct the conversation. Users can create a recent audio preview, click the “interactive” button, then click “join” while listening, and the AI hosts will call the user and ask a query.
Interacting with AI review hosts will only be available in recent audio reviews, not existing ones.
Google warned in: blog entry that audio review interaction is still experimental and “hosts may additionally pause awkwardly before responding or [may] sometimes they introduce inaccuracies.”
Former NotebookLM product leader Raiza Martin told VentureBeat that Google will introduce more controls and interactions with audio review.
A very recent look
Google has redesigned NotebookLM to help users “better manage content and ask the AI interface questions about their sources.”
The recent look introduces three panels: a Sources panel for all documents or files uploaded to NotebookLM; a chat panel that permits you to access the Gemini chat window to search data sources; and the Studio panel for creating study guides, briefing documents, and audio overviews.
“From the starting, we wanted NotebookLM to be a tool that might allow you to effortlessly go from asking questions, to reading sources, to capturing your individual ideas. Today we’re introducing a recent design that makes it easier than ever to switch between different activities in one unified interface,” Google said in a blog post.
Interest from enterprises
Since its launch, NotebookLM has had a number of applications, even in the enterprise space. Some have even claimed it is a “CRM killer.”
Users posted on social media about other ways they used NotebookLM. Sam Lessin, former vp of product at Meta and general partner at Slow Ventures, he said in X that his company uses NotebookLM as an alternative of CRM.
Martin previously told VentureBeat that her team noticed that many users began sharing notebooks with others, turning some of them into a repository for data on company policies or design research.