NotebookLM

NotebookLM is Google's tool for working with your own documents: you upload PDFs, web pages, videos or notes, and the AI answers, summarises and explains using only those sources. It still exists, but since July 2026 it's been called Gemini Notebook; it's the same product and the notebooks you already had are still there (checked in September 2026).

What sets it apart from a normal chat is that it's anchored in your sources: each answer shows which chunk of your documents it comes from, so you can go and check. That cuts down on made-up answers a lot, though it doesn't eliminate them entirely. It became famous for its audio summaries with two voices chatting, like a podcast about your documents. What confuses newcomers is treating it as an all-purpose chat: if the answer isn't in what you've uploaded, it's not its territory. And with the name change, some people think it's disappeared; according to Google, the old links still work.

I've used it for months, before and after the name change, so I can talk about it with examples and not just with Google's spec sheet. If you have to digest a lot of documentation, it's worth trying. In "What I really use NotebookLM for" I explain what it's really useful for, what it does better than a chat, where it falls short and how I combine it with Claude, plus a short guide to getting started.