In late 2024, Google was one of the first companies to start offering deep research tools through its AI chatbot. Now, almost a full year later, the company is bringing that same capability to NotebookLM. Like its Gemini counterpart, this tool allows you to task the app with generating comprehensive reports on a single topic. When you queue up an in-depth research task, NotebookLM will browse hundreds of websites on your behalf before starting to write down its findings.
The whole process may take a few minutes, but at the end you’ll have a multi-page report to read. As the model works in the background, you can instruct it to look for specific online sources. NotebookLM will also recommend articles, documents, and websites that may be relevant to your query. Once its findings are ready, you can use any of NotebookLM’s capabilities to generate insights on the content.
With today’s update, Google is also adding a variety of sources that NotebookLM can access. The app can now pull data from Google Sheets, Microsoft Word documents, and PDFs you upload to Google Drive. It’s also now possible to add Google Drive files by simply copying the URL. Google says all of today’s enhancements should be available to users within a week. The timing of the update is coincidental as the company recently gave NotebookLM the ability to generate flashcards and quizzes.