Google’s plan to put Gemini in every one of its products is happening at a rapid pace. One AI product that many are looking forward to is NotebookLM, which helps parse documents, videos and more using Google’s advanced AI models. It has been available on the web since 2023, but Google recently said it would get an Android app, which is available for pre-install.
NotebookLM aims to help students, professionals, and researchers better understand complex information through features like smart summaries and the ability to ask questions about documents and other materials. It even lets you generate AI podcasts, called Audio Overviews, to make it easier to digest complex topics.
At the moment, NotebookLM exists on a website. You can visit it on your phone, but the interface is not user-friendly compared to the desktop version. The mobile app will change that. The app is expected to be released at Google I/O in late May but you can pre-register to be notified when the download is live.
NotebookLM banks on the same technology as Google’s other chatbots and AI projects, but instead of a general purpose robot, NotebookLM is focused on documents you upload. It can assimilate text files, websites, and videos, including multiple files and source types for a single agent. There is a context window of 500,000 tokens and supports document uploads as large as 200MB. Google says this creates a queryable “AI expert” that can answer detailed questions and discuss ideas based on the source data.
According to screenshots on the app listings, the dedicated app will allow users to create new notebooks and view the ones they have already created. They can also upload new sources from their device and view the ones they have already uploaded in each of the notebooks.
Besides mobile, the apps will be available on iPads and tablets, where you’ll have a bigger screen to multitask.