Google announced updates to its AI note-taking and research assistant, NotebookLM, on Thursday. These updates include the ability to get summaries of YouTube videos and audio files, as well as the option to create shareable AI-generated audio discussions. The tool was originally launched at Google’s I/O developer conference last year and has since expanded to markets like India, the U.K., and over 200 countries. It was initially used by educators and learners, but has recently seen a shift in its user base, with 50% now being business professionals. This has prompted the NotebookLM team to introduce new features in hopes of making the tool popular among people of different demographics. One of these features is the Audio Overview, which allows users to turn their documents into engaging audio discussions. The latest update allows users to share the Audio Overview with a public URL, which can be copied and shared with others. The tool also now supports YouTube videos and audio files as new source types, in addition to its existing support for Google Docs, PDFs, text files, Google Slides, and webpages. These new features help users summarize key points from YouTube videos and generate insights from audio recordings. According to Raiza Martin, a senior product manager for AI at Google Labs, every new feature added to NotebookLM is based on user feedback. The tool is powered by Google’s multimodal large language model Gemini 1.5 Pro and has seen a majority of its usage in the U.S., with Japan emerging as the next big market. Some users are also utilizing NotebookLM for better SEO.
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