NotebookLM updates Business to Plus with more voice, and lets all users interact with AI hosts

Google Expanding access to the commercial version of its popularity LM notebook The app, now called NotebookLM Plus, is aimed at organizations, teams and individuals who rely on the app’s research tools.

The company has also updated its podcast-like Audio Overview feature, which allows users to interact with AI hosts and ask questions out loud.

Research tool, which allows people to collect information in “notebooks” and ask questions with answers from the source material, It was launched in July last year On preview. It became popular Generally available in December. Originally built with Gemini 1.5, NotebookLM has been upgraded with a beta version of Google 2.0 Flash, Google said.

After the Google team noticed a lot of different use cases for NotebookLM — including several enterprise projects — the company launched NotebookLM Plus for organizations, teams, and individuals who use the app frequently. NotebookLM Plus will have five times the number of audio overviews, notebooks, and resources per notebook.

Premium users can also customize the style and style of notebooks, share notebooks with team members, and see usage analytics. Google said it has also added more privacy and security features.

NotebookLM Plus can be accessed through Google Workspace or… Google Space Agents. Next year, NotebookLM Plus will be included in the Google One AI Premium subscription.

Google announced what it was then called LM Business Notebook in October as a beta program for new business-focused uses of the app.

Voice interaction

Voice Overview, where users can create a voice conversation based on information in the notebook, It came out in September It was an instant success. The nature of audio podcasting has provided a way to help people digest complex information via a one-to-one conversation and has proven very popular.

The tool often includes AI-generated hosts who talk about the information in the notebooks; Now, NotebookLM users can step in and ask questions using their voice to get more details or guide the conversation. Users can create a new audio overview, tap the “Interactive” button and then tap “Join” while listening, and the AI ​​hosts will contact the user with their question.

Interaction with AI Overviews hosts will only be available in the new audio Overviews, not in existing views.

Google warned in a Blog post Interacting with the audio overview is still experimental, and “hosts may also pause awkwardly before responding or (may) occasionally provide inaccurate information.”

Google will do that, former NotebookLM product lead Raisa Martin told VentureBeat Introducing more controls And interactions with audio overview.

Completely new look

Google has redesigned NotebookLM to help users “better manage content and ask the AI ​​interface questions about their sources.”

The new look offers three panels: the Sources panel for all documents or files uploaded to NotebookLM; Chat panel to access the Gemini chat box to interrogate data sources; And the Studio panel for creating study guides, summary documents, and audio overviews.

“From the beginning, we wanted NotebookLM to be a tool that lets you move effortlessly from asking questions to reading your sources to capturing your own ideas. Today, we’re rolling out a new design that makes it easier than ever to switch between those different activities in a single interface,” Google said in a blog post. “Unified.”

The interest of the institution

Since its launch, NotebookLM has had various uses, even in the enterprise space. Some even claimed so It is the “CRM killer”.

Users posted on social media about the different ways they use NotebookLM. Sam Lesin, former VP of Product at Meta and General Partner at Slow Ventures, On X he said that his company NotebookLM is used instead of CRM.

Martin previously told VentureBeat that her team saw many users start sharing notebooks with others, making some notebooks a repository of data about company policies or project research.

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