Research assistant and note-taker rolled into one – allow me to introduce you to NotebookLM.
When it comes to Generative AI, most people have probably heard of ChatGPT. As of mid-February 2025, it had 400 million weekly active users.
But the tool I use every day is relatively obscure.
It’s a Google tool called NotebookLM and it had 9 million visits in January 2025.
NotebookLM is, I think, completely undervalued. Allow me to introduce you to its joys.
What is it?
It’s a research assistant, rather than a chat interface. Which means less charm and less fun – but also way less inaccuracy.
Because here’s the thing: NotebookLM will only look at the material you give it. It does not infer patterns from data on the internet; it infers patterns from the links and documents that you input.
(Brief technical aside: NotebookLM is technically a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) tool. This is a technique that “modifies interactions with a large language model (LLM) so that the model responds to user queries with reference to a specified set of documents, using this information to supplement information from its pre-existing training data”, to quote Wikipedia.)
How to use it: step one
Hit up the URL here: NotebookLM
You get a page that looks like this:
Tip: It’s a Google product, so if you are already logged in to your Google account elsewhere, it will simply use that account
Step two
Click “Try NotebookLM” at the bottom of the page.. You’ll get a page that looks like this at the top.
Step three
To make a new notebook, click “Create new”. The first thing that happens is a block pops up where you enter your sources.
You can input web addresses, YouTube videos, Google documents and upload documents from your computer (see Tricks and tips below for more on this).
There’s a big space to upload docs; on some screens, you have to scroll down to add other things.
Step four
Once you’ve inputted your source or sources, you are taken to the main NotebookLM page. For the purposes of this post, I entered two links to posts about solstices and equinoxes:
The Equinoxes and the Solstices
The Seasons, the Equinox, and the Solstices
This is the result:
It has to be said that it’s not the most intuitive interface in the world.But there’s hope if you look at it from left to right:
The sources panel on the left contains the links to all your sources
Chat in the middle is where you “talk” to Notebook
Studio on the right is where the results of that “talking” are stored
Step five
When I uploaded the two posts, Notebook gave the note a name; you can change that if need be (just click in the field in the top left-hand corner where the name is)
Tip: off the bat, it’ll generate a summary of the first source, which is really only useful if you are entering one source. I don’t ever use that text..
Step six
Ask a question!
In the box at the bottom of the centre panel (called Chat), I asked (and then clicked the blue arrow): “When is the autumn solstice in the southern hemisphere in 2025?”
And got the summary you see below. You’ll also see that the question has not been answered. That’s because the two sources don’t contain the information. Importantly, NotebookLM has not made something up. It just gives the best information it can, based on the sources it has. (The numbers in grey link to specific places in the source documents that the information was taken from.)
Step seven
Do something else. I asked: “Please explain what an equinox is in language suitable for a primary school pupil.”
And got this pretty good answer:
Imagine the Earth is like a spinning top going around the Sun. It has a stick going through the middle called its axis, and this stick is a little bit tilted.
Most of the time, because the Earth is tilted, one part of the Earth gets more sunshine than the other. This is why we have summer in one place and winter in another.
But there are two special times in the year called equinoxes. During an equinox, the Earth’s tilt is just right so that neither the top (North Pole) nor the bottom (South Pole) is leaning towards the Sun. It’s like the Earth is standing up straight compared to the Sun on these days.
Because of this, the Sun is right over the middle of the Earth, which is called the equator. And because the Sun is shining equally on the top and bottom halves of the Earth, the day and the night are almost the same length all over the world.
The word “equinox” even comes from old words that mean “equal night”. So, an equinox is a time when the day and night are nearly equal because the Earth isn’t tilted towards or away from the Sun. There are two equinoxes every year.
Step eight
If you like the answer, click “Save to note”. If you don’t do that, you’ll lose it. The note will be saved in the panel on the right (called Studio, where all notes are kept)
Something important to know
Underneath any given note, there’s an icon to copy and paste, and two like/dislike icons.
If you click like or dislike, that sends feedback to Google. And according to the Notebook privacy Ts&Cs, that’s the only point at which the work you are doing is seen by a human being. They say:
We value your privacy and never use your personal data to train NotebookLM.
- If you are logging in with your personal Google account and choose to provide feedback, human reviewers may review your queries, uploads, and the model’s responses to troubleshoot, address abuse or make improvements. Keep in mind that it’s best to avoid submitting any information you wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing.
- As a Google Workspace or Google Workspace for Education user, your uploads, queries and the model’s responses in NotebookLM will not be reviewed by human reviewers, and will not be used to train AI models.
Other things you can do
Underneath the first summary generated, there are these three buttons:
Add note – opens a blank note where you can make your own notes
Audio overview – makes a podcast, which you can also do at the top of the panel on the right (here’s the one generated about my two sources)
Mindmap – the one for my query looks like this; all the blocks are clickable and open up to expand the map:
At the bottom of the Studio panel, there are four pre-built queries that will give text answers, all of them pretty self-explanatory: Study Guide, Briefing doc, FAQ and Timeline
Tips and tricks
1. Slightly irritating caveats about documents – Google docs have to be set to be viewable by everyone; NotebookLM won’t take Word docs. Save those as plain text documents first
2. You can share notebooks just as you would a Google document – but only with people whose emails you know. In the version I use, you can’t make a notebook publicly viewable.
3. Once you add sources, the app takes a snapshot of their current content. So if you update anything in your Google Docs file, for instance, it won’t reflect on NotebookLM.
4. Sometimes, a source turns pink. That means Notebook can’t upload it for some reason (the link might be behind a paywall for instance). If you hover over the blue icon next to the web address, it will turn into three vertical dots – click on those to get the option to remove the source.
5. If you put in a lot of sources (you can do 50 per notebook), keep that list in a separate document. It’s easy to get confused, and sometimes hard to find the original link in the NotebookLM list.
What I use it for
For me, it’s chiefly useful as a writing tool. For any document that I’m writing I’ll do my various searches and then take those links and put them all in a notebook. Sometimes I ask NotebookLM to generate an outline for whatever I’m writing based on the sources. Or I might ask it to find specific quotes from specific sources. Or I might ask it content-based questions: “What are the four things XXX could do”?
I’ve also used it to summarise advice from articles that I find – I took some resources and asked it to summarise what they said about business planning, for example.
Things it could be used for
Some of these I’ve done, some I’ve read about and some were based on a Perplexity search:
1. In a team project, put all the documents and resources relating to the project in a notebook and share it with everyone. They can then ask NotebookLM questions if they can’t get hold of another team member.
2. I’ve seen people saying you can put in all the links relating to a conference you are going to and then ask it to find the best session to attend based on your interests. I tried this only once, but the conference website was set up in such a way that NotebookLM couldn’t mine the data properly.
3. You could use it to collect all the information you have about a health condition, and then track symptoms, and prepare questions for medical appointments.
4. Keep all the links for a trip you are planning and ask questions when you need information.
5. Brainstorm ideas for creative projects by gathering various sources of inspiration (you’re making a quilt? this the place for all those tutorials and videos).
6. Summarise academic materials into study guides, FAQs, or timelines for better learning and exam preparation (or turn them into podcasts that you can listen to while doing other things).
And that’s it for this week. If there’s a question you’d like me to answer, or a topic you’d like covered, contact me here. I can’t promise to answer everything (especially deeply technical questions), but I can generally get us all pointed in the right direction.
Main picture: Sear Greyson, Unsplash
Other things I have written
How to write a good prompt for AI – A common complaint about AI is that it just doesn’t give good answers. That’s because you are asking questions. Instead, here’s my guide to how to write a good prompt.
Research skills: Five ways to assess and use reliable sources – With our wondrous phones in our hands, we can all find any information we want. Here’s how to apply research skills to that information..
Research: How to keep track of sources and references – Whatever kind of writing you do, there are going to be online links you need to keep track of. Here’s a simple and quick way to get your research done…
A beginner’s guide for journalists: Taking notes – Taking notes is one of journalism’s most obvious and yet most under-rated skills. Here are some tips to making the most of that interview…
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