Google’s NotebookLM launches globally and positive aspects Gemini 1.5 Professional totally free
TL;DR
- Google is releasing its research-oriented AI device globally, increasing availability past the US.
- The app now makes use of Gemini 1.5 Professional beneath the hood, permitting as much as 500 sources per mission.
- NotebookLM stays fully free to make use of, but it surely’s an experimental mission beneath Google’s AI Labs initiative.
Google is increasing its research-oriented AI device, NotebookLM, to greater than 200 nations and territories past the US. Moreover wider availability, the search big has introduced that NotebookLM will now be powered by Gemini 1.5 Professional beneath the hood. The latter is notably Google’s present flagship language mannequin, in any other case solely obtainable if you happen to pay $20 per thirty days for a Gemini Superior subscription.
The most recent launch of NotebookLM additionally positive aspects a couple of new handy options, similar to the choice to import new exterior sources like internet URLs and Google Slides shows. As soon as imported right into a mission (or pocket book), NotebookLM can reference these sources to reply questions by way of a chatbot-style interface. Past that, it may well additionally create supporting content material similar to FAQs, research guides, and timelines of occasions. You may export these as a pinned observe throughout the mission or draft your personal for future reference.
In my testing, NotebookLM was not in a position to fetch up-to-date details about any latest world occasions. That is not like Google’s Gemini chatbot, which might search the online even if you happen to don’t explicitly ask it to. Put merely, NotebookLM will solely seek the advice of its inner information base plus any supplied supply materials on prime of that and draw the road right here. To quell fears of AI hallucinations, responses inside NotebookLM may also comprise inline citations much like how Microsoft’s Copilot hyperlinks again to sources.
On that observe, NotebookLM now helps including as much as 50 sources per pocket book, a big bounce from the earlier restrict of simply 5. Every supply doc can embody 500,000 phrases of textual content, which helps clarify why Google has tapped its highest-end language mannequin.
When Google introduced Gemini 1.5 Professional earlier this yr, it claimed the mannequin showcased “a breakthrough in long-context understanding.” Extra particularly, the corporate claims it may well deal with as much as a million tokens, longer than competing language fashions like GPT-4o. NotebookLM takes benefit of Gemini 1.5 Professional’s multimodal capabilities, that means it may well reply questions on graphs and pictures in its sources.
NotebookLM is certainly one of Google’s many AI experiments at present beneath energetic improvement, but it surely’s on the extra polished finish of the spectrum. One other mission, dubbed AI Overviews, sparked controversy after providing harmful recommendation starting from consuming rocks to including non-toxic glue to a pizza. Google launched AI Overviews to pick beta testers within the US beneath “Search Generative Expertise” final yr. If NotebookLM follows the identical path, it could turn out to be a mainline Google product within the coming months.
