Guide to NotebookLM

Google's AI tools are starting to get interesting.

What is Google Learn about?

Google's new AI tool, Learn About, is designed as a conversational learning companion that adapts to individual learning needs and curiosity. It allows users to explore various topics by entering questions, uploading images or documents, or selecting from curated topics. The tool aims to provide personalized responses tailored to the user's knowledge level, making it user-friendly and engaging for learners of all ages.

Is Generative AI leading to a new take on Educational technology? It certainly appears promising heading into 2025.

The Learn About tool utilizes the LearnLM AI model, which is grounded in educational research and focuses on how people learn. Google insists that unlike traditional chatbots, it emphasizes interactive and visual elements in its responses, enhancing the educational experience. For instance, when asked about complex topics like the size of the universe, Learn About not only provides factual information but also includes related content, vocabulary building tools, and contextual explanations to deepen understanding.

Try Learn About

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Perplexity - the Advent of AI Commerce

Perplexity has been partnering with U.S. campuses striking deals to offer students Perplexity Pro. They are also piloting whether Perplexity can act as shopping assistant with a “Shop like a Pro” feature. To become more commercially viable it’s not surprising to see that Perplexity is now a one-stop solution where you can research and purchase products in what they term a new era of AI-commerce and one-click purchasing. Using Perplexity Buy with Pro, consumers can checkout with one click, requiring users to save their shipping and billing information just once. Perplexity manages this partnering with Shopify among others.

Another trend we are going to see in 2025 is a variety of AI agent frameworks vying for more mainstream adoption among developers. This is a super importance race if you believe AI agents have a lot of potential to automate tasks. Meanwhile, on the Enterprise AI level, AI spend in 2024 has gone from $2.3B to $13.8B, a 6x increase.

NotebookLM emerges in 2024

How NLM has gone mainstream for Google in 2024 is a success story all on its own. NotebookLM, an AI-powered note-taking tool, was developed by a team at Google Labs and was initially introduced as "Project Tailwind" during the Google I/O conference in May 2023. The project was led by Steven Johnson (Steven Johnson of the Newsletter Adjacent Possible), who has been instrumental in shaping its vision and functionality. Johnson's collaboration with Google aimed to create a tool that enhances the research and ideation processes for users by leveraging AI capabilities to interact with their documents effectively.

When Audio Overviews was released, the synthetic podcasts went viral, creating Google’s own little “mini-ChatGPT” moment in the Autumn of 2024. I’ve been getting a lot or requests to dive more deeply into this tool. I asked Alex McFarland of AI Disruptorwho already made us a hitguide of Perplexityfor his insights!

More articles by Alex

• OpenAI Operator agent will change how we use AI
• New data shows AI is replacing freelancers faster than expected
• How to use Perplexity in your daily workflow

This article has since gone a bit viral over on Substack, by Alex McFarland .

How to use NotebookLM for personalized knowledge synthesis

When Google released NotebookLM's podcast feature, my inbox exploded with people asking about it. Everyone started creating basic podcast summaries - but they were missing the real power of this tool.

I've spent the last few weeks diving into NotebookLM, discovering workflows that go far beyond simple summarization.

Here's the thing: most people are using NotebookLM like a basic text-to-speech tool. Upload a document, get a summary, done. But that's like using ChatGPT just to fix your grammar - you're barely scratching the surface.

Before we dive into the specific workflows, let's quickly cover what makes NotebookLM fundamentally different from other AI tools:

• It stays focused on your sources - unlike ChatGPT, it shouldn’t hallucinate or bring in outside information
• It can process multiple documents at once, finding connections between them
• It generates natural-sounding podcast discussions about your content
• It provides source citations for everything, linking directly to the original text
• It's completely free (for now)

The power of NotebookLM isn't in any single feature - it's in how you combine them with the new customization options rolled out in October. This is where things get interesting.

In this guide, I'll show you:

1. How to use the new advanced audio customization features
2. Two specific workflows for synthesizing information (research papers and YouTube videos)
3. Pro tips for maximizing results with any type of content
4. Common pitfalls to avoid (learned these the hard way)

Let's start by looking at the recent customization updates that make a lot of this possible…

Continue on to Read the Guide.