Google keeps building on NotebookLM's features with YouTube and audio files support

Google has recently been investing in its note-taking and research assistant NotebookLM. Originally a project to showcase PaLM 2's capabilities, Google upgraded the model powering NotebookLM to Gemini 1.5 in June, as it expanded access to over 200 countries and added support for additional input sources, including Google Slides and URLs, as well as inline citations with direct links to the referenced content.

Then, earlier this month, Google launched NotebookLM's Audio Overviews; a feature that transforms a Notebook into lively discussions between two speakers that presents a summary of the Notebook's content and has the speakers draw connections within topics present within a Notebook while they take turns speaking. A recent minor update enables users to share their Audio Overviews by generating a public link.

On Tuesday, Google announced it would expand the range of supported input sources with public YouTube videos and audio files. According to Google, early tests reveal that support for YouTube videos and audio files has unlocked several new use cases. For instance, NotebookLM can help users summarize and explore YouTube videos of lectures, leveraging the increased reliability brought by inline citations; automate the transcription of uploaded audio recordings to extract the most relevant information; and create study guides based on content from diverse sources, such class recordings, handwritten notes, and lecture slides.

Google also announced that Google Workspace admins can enable NotebookLM for their entire organization. Unfortunately, the ability to share Audio Overviews is currently unavailable for Workspace accounts.