NotebookLM, launched by Google, is an AI-driven tool that transforms the way you conduct research. By uploading various sources—such as PDFs, Google Docs, websites, and YouTube videos—you can harness its AI to generate a range of outputs, including summaries, FAQs, study guides, and even audio podcasts. This makes it an essential tool for professionals seeking to streamline their workflows with AI.

In this tutorial, we’ll guide you through the process of using NotebookLM to explore its own capabilities. By using YouTube videos about NotebookLM as our source material, we’ll demonstrate how to set up a notebook, add sources, and utilize features like the chat interface, FAQs, study guides, and podcasts.

This practical approach will not only familiarize you with NotebookLM but also equip you with the skills to apply it to any topic or project, from learning new subjects to preparing reports or training materials.

The tool's versatility is further enhanced by a recent update that let's you "Join" your audio podcast, allowing users to engage in real-time conversation by asking questions during playback.

Key Objectives

• Set up a new notebook in NotebookLM and add YouTube videos as source.
• Use the chat feature to ask questions and gain insights from the sources.
• Generate FAQs, and a study guide to explore different content formats.
• Create a customized podcast and join the podcast.
• Share your notebook with others for collaboration and feedback.

Step 1 - Access NotebookLM and create a new notebook

To begin, navigate to NotebookLM and sign in with your Google account. This requires a Google account and is best viewed on a desktop for optimal experience, though mobile is supported. Once logged in, you’ll see a welcome screen with a prominent "Create" button. 

Step 2 - Use Gemini to find relevant YouTube videos

To ensure our sources reflect only the latest information, we'll leverage Gemini within Google AI Studio to identify recent YouTube videos about NotebookLM. This marks a significant shift from our current use of Gemini and ChatGPT: we're now instructing the AI to rely exclusively on our selected source materials, preventing outdated or irrelevant information from being included. 

Access Google AI Studio at aistudio.google.com and sign in with your Google account.
Select the Gemini 2.0 Flash model and enable “Grounding with Google Search” to ensure the model searches the web for up-to-date results. 

Then, enter the following prompt in the prompt box:

List the 10 most recent YouTube videos about NotebookLM from February and March 2025. Search online and provide only the URLs and the date of each video.

Gemini’s web search capability ensures the URLs are current. The URLs might appear unusual, e.g.

https://vertexaisearch.cloud.google.com/grounding-api-redirect/AQXblrzGpI0h-paBfPIia7c…., but clicking them reveals the YouTube URL you can use in NotebookLM.

Step 3 - Add YouTube video URLs as sources in NotebookLM

Now, copy the YouTube URLs provided by Gemini and add them as sources in your NotebookLM notebook. In the interface, go to the "Sources" panel on the left, click "Add source," and select "URL." Paste each URL one by one, ensuring all 10 videos are added. 

NotebookLM will process these URLs to extract relevant information, such as video transcripts or descriptions, to use for generating our content later.

Now that we have all 10 Youtube videos as sources, let's also name our new notebook something like "NotebookLM Latest Features March 2025" to stay organized.

Step 4 - Use chat to ask questions and gain insights

Before generating content, let’s explore the chat feature to interact with our sources. This lets you ask questions and get answers directly from the AI based on the videos.

List the 10 most mentioned use cases from these videos for NotebookLM.

The response will provide a list of use cases, each linked to the source video for verification. Clicking on the three dots will expand the source reference to show all sources. This step helps you see how NotebookLM is applied in real-world scenarios, such as research, content creation, or education, and ensures your content is based exactly on your sources.

Here are the results I got with this prompt:

Based on the provided YouTube video transcripts, here are 10 of the most mentioned use cases for NotebookLM:

1. Research and Learning: NotebookLM is frequently mentioned as a tool to boost research, understand complex topics, and learn new information by interacting with uploaded sources like documents, websites, and videos. This includes using it as a research assistant.
2. Note-Taking Augmentation: NotebookLM is used to augment personal note-taking systems like Obsidian by providing a conversational layer to existing notes, filling in gaps in knowledge, and selectively engaging with specific notes. It complements PKM systems.
3. Summarization of Information: NotebookLM is repeatedly mentioned for its ability to summarize large amounts of information from various sources quickly and efficiently. This includes generating brief overviews and more digestible formats.
4. Content Repurposing: Users leverage NotebookLM to repurpose existing content like blog posts and videos into different formats such as social media posts, promotional material, blog outlines, and newsletters.
5. Generating Audio Overviews/Podcasts: A prominent feature is NotebookLM's ability to create AI-generated audio conversations or podcasts that summarize and discuss the uploaded sources. This helps in consuming information in a different way, like listening during a walk.
6. Identifying Themes and Connections: NotebookLM assists in identifying themes and connections between different notes and sources, helping users to see the bigger picture and make new insights.
7. Generating Structured Documents: The tool can create study guides, briefing documents, FAQs, and timelines from the provided sources, offering structured ways to learn and understand the information.
8. Privacy and Data Control: The privacy aspect of NotebookLM is highlighted, emphasizing that personal data is not used to train the AI model by default, offering a more private alternative to other AI tools.
9. Mind Map Generation: A new and heavily featured update is the ability to create mind maps from documents, audio, and video to visualize information and learning. This aids in visual learning and organization.
10. Interacting with Various File Formats: NotebookLM supports a wide range of input formats, including markdown (from Obsidian), PDF, TXT, audio, Google Drive documents (Docs, Slides), website links, and YouTube videos, making it versatile for different types of information.

Step 5 - Generate FAQs and explore Study Guides

Now, let’s use NotebookLM to create different types of content from the videos. We’ll generate FAQs, and a study guide to see how it organizes information.

FAQs: In the "Studio" panel, select "FAQ". The tool will extract common questions and answers from the sources, displaying them in the "Notes" section.

I added our generation of FAQs at the end of this article in Appendix A.

Study Guide: Choose "Study Guide" from the "Studio" panel. You’ll get a detailed resource with a quiz, essay questions, and a glossary—all pulled from the video content.

Study guides include a quiz with answers, essay-format questions, and a glossary of key terms, offering a comprehensive learning package for deeper engagement. This is particularly useful for professional training or team onboarding. I also added a study guide for NotebookLM in Appendix B.

Step 6 - Create a customized podcast

Before generating, customize it by adding a prompt in “Audio Overview” - “Customize”.

Prompt:

Focus on FAQs for NotebookLM.

Now we create the podcast by clicking the “Generate” button. This will produce an interactive audio discussion by AI hosts, summarizing the FAQs in a highly engaging format. Here you can download the podcast that was generated for me.

Step 7 - Join the podcast

NotebookLM's newly released "Interactive Mode" lets you engage with your podcast like never before. After creating your podcast, start playback and activate Interactive Mode.

At any moment, click "Join" to speak, asking questions or adding comments. This feature brings real-time interaction to the experience, giving you instant answers or deeper insights as you listen.

This feature is so new and still in BETA that none of the YouTube videos included it yet, making it a cutting-edge addition to NotebookLM that you can explore firsthand!

Step 8 - Share your NotebookLM

By clicking the Share button in the top-right corner, you can easily share your notebook and invite others to contribute as editors. This opens up an entirely new dimension of collaborative AI research—just one click away!

For security, note that NotebookLM Plus offers besides access to premium features also enterprise-grade protection via Google Cloud, important for sensitive data.

Ending

You’ve now unlocked the power of NotebookLM to craft compelling content—think detailed FAQs, structured study guides, and even customizable podcasts that you can personalize to fit your needs. But perhaps the most amazing feature is the Interactive Mode, where you can jump into your own podcast in real-time—asking questions, dropping comments, and engaging directly with the content as it unfolds. This feature doesn’t just enhance your experience; it transforms it, delivering instant interaction and richer, more tailored insights.

Appendix A: Frequently asked questions about NotebookLM

1. What is NotebookLM and what are its main features? NotebookLM is a research and note-taking tool developed by Google that utilizes Gemini artificial intelligence to help users interact with a variety of specified resources. Its key features include the ability to upload up to 50 sources (including PDFs, MP3s, Google Drive documents, slides, website links, YouTube videos, and pasted text), a chat interface for asking questions about these sources, and a "Studio" section offering tools like audio overviews (AI-generated discussions about your sources), note-saving capabilities, study guide generation (outlines, quizzes, essay questions, glossary), briefing documents (summaries), FAQ generation, and timeline creation. A recent major update introduces mind map generation from your sources, allowing for visual learning and organization. NotebookLM also emphasizes source grounding, providing citations for its answers that link directly back to the relevant sections in your uploaded materials, enhancing trust and verifiability. Users can also share notebooks with others for collaborative research.

2. How can NotebookLM help with research and learning? NotebookLM significantly aids research and learning by centralizing information from multiple sources and using AI to process and summarize it. Users can quickly get an overview of complex topics, identify key concepts, and find answers to specific questions without having to manually sift through numerous documents, websites, or videos. The citation feature allows for easy verification of information. The study guide, briefing, FAQ, and timeline generation tools offer structured ways to learn and review material. The new mind map feature provides a visual representation of the information, facilitating understanding of relationships and hierarchies within the content. Furthermore, the audio overview feature allows for learning through listening, and the interactive mode enables users to ask questions within the AI-generated discussion.

3. What types of sources can be used with NotebookLM and what are the limitations? NotebookLM supports a wide range of sources, including PDF documents, MP3 audio files, links to Google Drive documents and slides, website URLs, YouTube video links, and pasted text. In the free version, users can upload up to 50 sources, each with a word limit of 500,000 words or a size limit of 200 MB. For Google Drive links, NotebookLM creates a local copy and will prompt users to sync if the original document is updated. For websites, it extracts the text content but does not interact with images, videos, or links on the page. For YouTube videos, it processes the generated captions.

4. How does NotebookLM differ from other AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude? The primary distinction of NotebookLM lies in its ability to draw information and cite directly from user-specified sources. Unlike general-purpose AI models like ChatGPT or Claude, which primarily rely on their vast training data, NotebookLM focuses on understanding and extracting insights from the resources you provide. This targeted approach ensures that the answers are grounded in your specific materials and allows for easy verification through citations. While tools like Claude have recently gained web search capabilities, NotebookLM's core functionality is centered around analyzing and synthesizing user-uploaded content. Additionally, NotebookLM offers specialized features like audio overviews, study guide generation, and now mind maps, tailored for research and learning from a defined set of sources.

5. What is the new mind map feature in NotebookLM and how can it be used? The new mind map feature in NotebookLM allows users to generate visual representations of the information contained within their uploaded sources. After adding sources, a "Mind Map" option becomes available. Clicking this generates a concept map displayed in the notes section. Users can navigate this map, opening nodes to reveal information extracted from the sources related to specific topics. If multiple sources are used, the mind map integrates information from all of them. Opened nodes can be included in a downloaded PNG version of the map. This feature is particularly useful for visual learners, organizing complex information, brainstorming, and understanding the relationships between different concepts within the researched material.

6. Can NotebookLM be used for content creation, such as videos or podcasts? Yes, NotebookLM offers features that can aid in content creation. The audio overview tool can generate podcast-style discussions based on your sources, which can then be downloaded. While NotebookLM doesn't directly create animated videos, the generated audio can be used as a basis for video content, potentially with static images or animated audio waves. Additionally, the tool can help in summarizing and extracting key points from various resources, which can serve as the foundation for articles, scripts, or other forms of content. The integration with Google Gemini also allows for the creation of quizzes and interactive elements that could be part of online learning content.

7. What are the benefits of upgrading to NotebookLM Plus? NotebookLM Plus, the paid version, offers several enhancements for more intensive use. These include an even larger context window (up to 15 million words compared to 25 million words across 50 sources in the free version), five times higher usage limits for features like audio overview generation and the number of notebooks, access to "chat modes" that allow users to assign different personas or styles to the AI interactions (e.g., analyst, guide, custom expert), and most importantly, the ability to collaborate within NotebookLM by sharing entire notebooks with sources, customizations, and saved notes, or in a chat-only mode, with other users. These features are primarily beneficial for teams, companies, or individuals who rely heavily on NotebookLM for collaborative research and knowledge management.

8. How does NotebookLM integrate with other Google services like Gemini and Google Drive? NotebookLM is tightly integrated with other Google services. It allows users to directly add sources from Google Drive (Docs, Slides) and YouTube. The recent advancements in Google Gemini, particularly the introduction of Gemini Canvas, complement NotebookLM. Users can leverage NotebookLM to generate study guides or extract information from sources and then use Gemini Canvas to create interactive quizzes or visually appealing content based on that information. For example, a study guide generated in NotebookLM can be used as the basis for creating a coded, interactive quiz in Gemini Canvas. This synergy between the tools enhances the overall research, learning, and content creation workflow within the Google ecosystem.

Appendix B: NotebookLM Study Guide

Quiz

1. What is the core purpose of NotebookLM, and what Google AI model does it utilize for its functions?
2. Describe the "Sources" panel in NotebookLM. What types of files or links can users add as sources, and what are the limitations for the free version?
3. Explain the primary advantage of NotebookLM compared to general-purpose AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude, particularly in the context of research.
4. What is the "Studio" section in NotebookLM? List three of the features available within the Studio and briefly describe what each one does.
5. Describe the "audio overview" feature in NotebookLM. How can it be useful for users interacting with their uploaded sources?
6. What is the significance of the numbered citations that appear in NotebookLM's responses? How does this feature contribute to the reliability of the tool?
7. Explain the new "mind map" feature in NotebookLM. How can this feature benefit users in their learning or research processes?
8. How does NotebookLM interact with other Google services like Google Drive and YouTube? Provide specific examples from the source material.
9. According to the sources, what are the key benefits of upgrading to NotebookLM Plus compared to the free version?
10. Based on the provided materials, how can NotebookLM be used to aid in content creation, and what are some potential limitations or considerations for this application?

Quiz Answer Key

1. NotebookLM is a research and note-taking online tool by Google designed to help users understand and interact with a range of specified resources. It utilizes Google's Gemini artificial intelligence to assist with analyzing and synthesizing information from these sources.
2. The "Sources" panel is located on the left side of the NotebookLM interface and displays all the materials the user has added to a specific notebook. Users can upload PDFs, MP3s, link Google Drive documents or slides, link websites or YouTube videos, and paste text, with the free version allowing up to 50 sources, each with a 500,000-word or 200MB limit.
3. The primary advantage of NotebookLM is its ability to draw information directly from user-specified sources and cite those sources in its responses. This grounding in user-provided materials allows for easy verification of the information, unlike general-purpose AI that relies on its broad training data.
4. The "Studio" section is located on the right side of the NotebookLM interface and offers various tools for interacting with the sources. Three features include: "audio overview," which generates an AI-driven discussion about the sources; "study guide," which creates outlines, quizzes, essay questions, and a glossary; and "FAQ," which pulls out key questions from the resource.
5. The "audio overview" feature generates a podcast-style conversation between two AI hosts who discuss the content of the user's uploaded sources. This can be useful for learning through listening, getting a summarized understanding of the material, and even for content creation purposes.
6. The numbered citations in NotebookLM's responses indicate the specific sources and locations within those sources from which the AI has drawn the information. By clicking on these numbers, users can view the relevant excerpt in the source material, enhancing trust and allowing for fact-checking.
7. The new "mind map" feature generates a visual representation of the information within the uploaded sources, displayed as a concept map. This can be used for visual learning, organizing complex information, understanding relationships between concepts, and brainstorming.
8. NotebookLM integrates with Google Drive by allowing users to directly link and import Docs and Slides as sources, creating a local copy for analysis. It also allows users to input YouTube video links, processing the generated captions as source material. Furthermore, NotebookLM can be used in conjunction with Google Gemini's Canvas feature to create interactive content like quizzes based on the insights gained from NotebookLM.
9. Key benefits of NotebookLM Plus include an even larger context window (up to 15 million words), five times higher usage limits for features, access to "chat modes" that assign different personas to the AI, and the ability to collaborate with others by sharing entire notebooks.
10. NotebookLM can aid in content creation through its audio overview feature, which generates podcast-style discussions that can be downloaded and used as audio content. It can also help summarize and extract key points from various resources, forming the basis for written content. However, direct video creation with animation is not a primary feature, and users might need additional tools to make audio content visually engaging for platforms like YouTube.

Essay Format Questions

1. Discuss the potential impact of NotebookLM on educational practices and student learning. How might its features transform the way students conduct research, study for exams, and understand complex topics?
2. Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of NotebookLM as a research tool for professionals in various fields (e.g., business, journalism, academia). Consider its unique features and how they compare to traditional research methods and other AI-powered tools.
3. Evaluate the significance of "source grounding" in AI tools for information processing and knowledge acquisition, using NotebookLM as a primary example. Why is the ability to verify information crucial, and how effectively does NotebookLM address this need?
4. Explore the potential of integrating NotebookLM with other Google Workspace applications (e.g., Docs, Slides, Drive) and the newly introduced Google Gemini Canvas. How can this ecosystem of tools enhance productivity, collaboration, and content creation workflows?
5. Consider the ethical implications and potential challenges associated with using AI tools like NotebookLM for research and learning. What safeguards might be necessary to ensure responsible and effective use of such technologies?

Glossary of Key Terms

• AI (Artificial Intelligence): The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.
• Gemini: A family of multimodal artificial intelligence models developed by Google, used to power NotebookLM's analysis and interaction capabilities.
• NotebookLM: A research and note-taking online tool by Google that uses AI to help users interact with and understand information from their specified sources.
• Sources: The documents, links, or text that a user uploads or connects to within a NotebookLM notebook for AI analysis. These can include PDFs, MP3s, Google Drive files, websites, and YouTube videos.
• Chat Panel: The central interface in NotebookLM where users can ask questions and interact with the AI regarding their uploaded sources.
• Studio: The right-hand panel in NotebookLM that houses various AI-powered features for interacting with sources, such as audio overviews, study guide generation, and note-saving.
• Audio Overview: A feature in NotebookLM that generates a podcast-style conversation between two AI hosts who discuss the content of the user's uploaded sources.
• Note: A saved response or piece of information from the chat panel or generated by Studio features, stored for future reference within a NotebookLM notebook.
• Source Grounding: The practice of an AI providing citations and direct links back to the specific parts of the user-provided sources that support its answers, enhancing transparency and verifiability.
• Mind Map: A visual representation of the information within uploaded sources, generated by NotebookLM, showing relationships and hierarchies between different concepts.
• Context Window: The amount of data that an AI model can consider when processing a prompt or generating a response. NotebookLM boasts a large context window, especially in the Plus version.
• Multimodal Sources: The ability of a system to process and understand various types of data formats, such as text, audio, images (within slides in the context of NotebookLM), and video (via captions).
• NotebookLM Plus: The paid, upgraded version of NotebookLM that offers enhanced features like a larger context window, higher usage limits, chat modes, and collaboration capabilities.
• Chat Modes: A feature in NotebookLM Plus that allows users to assign different personas or interaction styles (e.g., analyst, guide) to the AI.
• Hallucination: In the context of AI, the generation of incorrect or nonsensical information that is not supported by the training data or the provided context. NotebookLM's source grounding aims to minimize this.
• Gemini Canvas: An interactive workspace within Google Gemini that allows users to combine text, code, images, and other elements to create visual and interactive content. It can be used in conjunction with insights from NotebookLM.