Googleresearch tool NotebookLM recently made waves with a recent feature that lets users generate what sound like podcasts. But while the company has been adding recent features, it is also seen more and more enterprise use cases.
NotebookLM allows users to upload PDFs, web pages, Google Docs, Google Slides, and paste text into the notebook, keeping the information in one place. Users also can ask Gemini questions about the documents in the notebook. NotebookLM, which first launched in July 2023 and has been generally available in the U.S. since December 2023, has slowly been expanding the varieties of files it could actually read.
However, one use case that has seen an increase in popularity is the sharing of NotebookLM research and information among corporate teams.
Raiza Martin, a Google product manager responsible for NotebookLM, told VentureBeat that enterprise teams are increasingly embracing the product’s organizational capabilities, which permit people to find the information they need in one place.
“We’ve seen students use it to accelerate their learning, understanding, and analysis, but we also know that what students are doing is exactly what professionals are trying to do,” Martin said, adding that inside months, Google was seeing “an equal, if not greater, number of professionals using NotebookLM.”
Create a podcast to explain your research
Since NotebookLM launched, Google has slowly been adding recent capabilities to the platform. The latest update lets users generate audio explanatory notes in the notebook, with two speakers discussing the topic.
“The conversational style was the first one we chose because we thought it was innovative, and in our early test it was very engaging. The dual speaker dynamic helped people engage with the content in a completely different way than a single speaker,” Martin said.
Google has noticed that users and teams are using NotebookLM to mix research, analytics, and even other information that employees might need to know. One way that firms can use NotebookLM is as a shortcut to storing data that ultimately finally ends up in RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generative) searches. Martin said that NotebookLM is itself a RAG tool that uses Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro.
Early on, I used to be able to use the audio generation feature and was able to point to one of my notebooks. I gave NotebookLM a few documents on global AI regulations, comparable to the text of the European Union AI Act. The audio generated summarized the act, but since the second file in the same notebook was an analytical blog post, the discussion took a number of directions. To me, it sounded a lot like the tech podcasts I listen to often, without the personal banter between the hosts.
Some users began posting about how they used the audio feature in addition to explaining the codebases.
It can be used to summarize blog posts.
“This is the first of many formats, but in the future we’ll give you knobs so you can change the number of speakers, the types of voices you use, and all the content,” Martin said.
Different use cases for NotebookLM
Part of NotebookLM’s growth has been users exploring different use cases, and Martin said that sometimes means users have to work out how to make it work for them. Some use cases have been very interesting, including a game master using it to track campaigns.
“I think there’s still a lot of education needed to get users to understand how to use this tool and why this type of tool can be valuable, but I would say I’m really pleased with the rate at which people are seeing the value and using NotebookLM,” Martin said.
Martin said NotebookLM will remain a standalone tool for now. However, some of the lessons learned from the tool could find their way into other Google productivity platforms.