NotebookLM Review: Bring Your Own Sources to This Ultra-Practical Google AI Tool

Of the countless AI tools available today, NotebookLM remains virtually one-of-a-kind. As a Google app that uses AI to help you work with your own source material — and only the stuff you provide it — it’s essentially without peer. Similar tools still lack either function, polish or both, giving this Google option no equal, at least not yet.

NotebookLM is an AI research assistant that lets you ask questions and create deliverables from the data that you feed it. Unlike a typical AI chatbot, NotebookLM relies entirely on your sources, not random information from the internet or reams of questionable training data.

This use of AI is valuable and in demand. For instance, Matthew McConaughey said last year on a podcast that he wanted a personal LLM that was fed all of his books, notes and other personal information so he could ask questions and get answers without any external influence. This is essentially what NotebookLM does.

Google first demoed what was then known as Project Tailwind at its I/O developer conference in 2023, calling it an AI-first notebook. It was able to answer questions based on the documents that were uploaded to it and create a study guide for the material automatically. While impressive in its own right, that is about as basic as NotebookLM gets today.

Since its official release in 2023, Google has given NotebookLM significantly more features, making it one of the best tools for learning and doing more with your data. It can be used in a variety of ways, making it flexible and appealing for just about anyone who uses it.

What is NotebookLM?

NotebookLM organizes your chaotic notes and allows you to pull specific threads out of dense information. What makes NotebookLM so interesting is what it can do with your source material once it has it.

You can chat with Gemini about the material to get answers. NotebookLM can also transform your sources into unexpected final products. It can give you answers via written text or create something entirely new, such as audio or video overviews, slide decks, study guides and more. Depending on your needs and use case, NotebookLM can truly be an all-in-one AI tool.

NotebookLM is nothing without the sources you feed it, and this is all it requires to work its magic. It treats sources as the only truth and will base all answers and outputs on these sources. It won’t scour the internet for answers. If your sources don’t have an answer to a question you ask, it will tell you.

For example, I asked “What’s 2 + 2?” in a Notebook that had some research notes from one of my vibe coding articles. Its response: “The provided sources do not contain information regarding mathematics or the sum of 2 plus 2.”

This is what sets NotebookLM apart. You purposely give the app guardrails so you can better trust the information fed back to you. AI likes to lie to you when it doesn’t have the answer. NotebookLM doesn’t do this, or at least not as frequently.

Your sources can be documents, audio files, YouTube videos, web links and more. Every time you add a new one, NotebookLM will reanalyze the entirety of the notebook and provide a summary of the collective sources. That means  NotebookLM is only as good as what you feed it. Fill your notebook with bad research materials, and you get bad results.

In the most basic form, you can ask NotebookLM specific questions based on your sources to find answers, which is great if your source material is very dense and you’re attempting to retrieve a very specific answer.

For example, say you upload an entire ebook for a book report you’re working on for school, along with notes you’ve taken for the class. You can ask NotebookLM to pull themes, key character motivations, and any other information based on your sources. This alone is incredibly helpful, but it’s just a fraction of what NotebookLM is capable of doing.

Who is NotebookLM best for?

NotebookLM is for anyone looking to understand and make use of their data better, so there’s no one “best” candidate. However, given the sheer number of features aimed at learning, I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest schoolwork. That said, NotebookLM can be used for work and for personal and creative purposes and projects, so it really doesn’t make sense to set limitations for it.

Common uses for NotebookLM

School material

Throw in your study notes, your homework for the day and handouts provided by the teacher, and you have a thorough resource you can chat with about your subject. With a click of a button, you can create flash cards, audio or video overviews, quizzes and more to prepare for the next quiz. Not everyone learns the same way, and NotebookLM lets students absorb knowledge on their terms with a variety of different outputs. Flash cards? Sure. Prefer podcasts? You can instantly create something you can listen to to go over your notes.

The podcast-like Audio Overview feature helped NotebookLM gain in popularity. The feature will let you create a “deep dive” of your source material in one click, and the output is a comprehensive audio with two AI hosts, both of which have personality and deliver the material in a way that is easy to understand. You can even customize what you want the specific subject you want the hosts to talk about. Audio Overviews are easily one of the best features NotebookLM has to offer.

Professional work

NotebookLM can be used nearly as much for work and business as it can for school, and it could come in clutch for your next big meeting or presentation. Whether you need to make talking points based on a dense report or an easy way to visualize that data in the form of a chart or slide deck, this can all be done with a click of a button in the NotebookLM studio tab.

For example, if presented with a lengthy press release or report, I can throw it into NotebookLM and ask the chat to break down the most important aspects in a list with bullets. Then I can create a short Audio Overview, guiding it to do the same thing with only the important information. Finally, I can ask for a long and in-depth version of the Audio Overview, so I can dive into all of the details if I want. The last step is most important: Always be sure to double-check your sources. NotebookLM is great at delivering the goods, but it doesn’t get a fact-check pass.

Creative assistant

For personal and creative endeavors, all of NotebookLM is at your disposal. Whether you need a writing partner or want to hear your notes, thoughts and journals relayed to you in the form of an audio overview, this is how you break the rules. Now that NotebookLM has Nano Banana as an image generator, you can even have it spin up some solid visuals based on your ideas and other work that you want to better understand and work with.

One of my latest surprises for a “let’s see what happens” type of project was during the holidays when I called my aunt for a recipe. I recorded the call so I wouldn’t miss anything. Equipped with a short doc of notes and the 45-minute-long call recording, I threw both into NotebookLM as sources to have it generate a proper recipe document, which it did without issue. What surprised me was what happened when I just used the call recording as the only source and had it create a slide deck.

NotebookLM went to town, creating a lengthy slide deck with a ton of personality. It wasn’t just a recipe, either. NotebookLM took the context of the conversation and integrated that into the slide deck. It was charming, cute and funny. Titled Aunt Carol’s Gumbo Gospel, it even featured one quote from the phone conversation, as if it knew it was perfect. “They’re coming if you got the gumbo, honey.” This is where NotebookLM can shine, in those “wildcard” moments where you aren’t expecting much, only to be wowed.

What are the cons of NotebookLM?

NotebookLM has a lot going for it, but it’s not without cons. You’re stuck with Google if you want to use it. That also means you’re stuck only using Gemini, too. And although Google says the information you add to NotebookLM isn’t used to train its AI models, some may feel a bit apprehensive about using such a tool given just how much data Google already has about you.

That said, if you’re already deeply entrenched in Google services, you may have already weighed those risks. But for the tech-savvy, there is an alternative called Open Notebook. While setting it up is far from as easy as accessing NotebookLM, and it can’t match it feature for feature, it’s an overall solid alternative that has privacy at its core.

Notebook LM pricing

NotebookLM is free to use if you have a Google account. Most people will probably be satisfied with the free version’s capabilities. Heavy users seeking more sources per notebook and higher access to Gemini usage can subscribe to a Google One AI plan, which provides higher usage limits, priority access to features and up to 600 sources per notebook compared to the free version’s 50.

Final thoughts

NotebookLM is an interesting concept to begin with, and it has grown into such a powerful AI tool that it might be the best Gemini-powered product released. It’s easy to use, but it will also reward you the more you tinker with it. There’s nothing else like it on the market right now that isn’t hindered in one way or another, and it receives updates and new features fairly consistently. There’s no wrong way to use it, and whatever feature you want it to have might indeed be on the to-do list of the NotebookLM team.