NotebookLM Interactive Demo
Explore a demo of NotebookLM, Google's AI research tool that lets you upload your own sources and ask questions, generate summaries, and create Audio Overviews from your documents.
What is NotebookLM?
NotebookLM is a free AI research assistant built by Google and powered by Gemini. Launched in 2023, it lets you upload your own sources — PDFs, Google Docs, YouTube URLs, web pages, copied text — and then interrogates them through a chat interface. Unlike general-purpose AI chatbots, NotebookLM grounds every response in the documents you provide, citing the specific passage it drew from.
The tool supports a range of output formats. Beyond simple Q&A, it can produce structured study guides, FAQs, briefing documents, and timelines pulled directly from your sources. The Audio Overview feature is particularly distinctive: two AI hosts discuss your uploaded materials in a podcast-style conversation, making dense research more accessible during a commute or workout.
All source material stays private to your notebook. NotebookLM does not use your uploaded documents to train Google's models. Each notebook holds up to 50 sources and 25 million words, making it practical for long-form research projects, literature reviews, and exam preparation.
How to get started with NotebookLM
- 1
Sign in with a Google account
Go to notebooklm.google.com and sign in. No additional setup is required. NotebookLM is free and ready to use immediately after logging in.
- 2
Create a new notebook
Click 'New Notebook' and give it a name that reflects your project. Each notebook is an isolated workspace with its own source set and conversation history.
- 3
Upload your sources
Add PDFs, Google Docs, web URLs, YouTube links, or pasted text. NotebookLM processes each source and indexes it for querying. You can add up to 50 sources per notebook.
- 4
Ask questions or generate outputs
Type questions in the chat panel to get cited answers from your sources. Use the notebook guide panel to generate a study guide, FAQ, briefing document, or timeline with one click.
- 5
Generate an Audio Overview
Click 'Generate' in the Audio Overview panel to create a podcast-style conversation about your sources. Download or play it directly in the browser. Customize the focus with optional instructions before generating.
Explore more NotebookLM guides
Step-by-step interactive demos and tutorials for NotebookLM.
Who is NotebookLM most useful for?
Researchers, students, and journalists who work with dense written material. Upload a stack of PDFs — academic papers, court filings, earnings reports — and NotebookLM surfaces connections and contradictions that would take hours to find manually. It handles source attribution automatically, so you can verify every claim against the original text.
Product teams and consultants synthesizing interview transcripts, market research, or internal documentation find it especially useful. Rather than re-reading fifty pages of notes before a meeting, you can ask NotebookLM to extract the three main objections customers raised or summarize the competitive landscape from your research folder.
Anyone building interactive product demos alongside written documentation can use Supademo to capture the hands-on workflows and pair it with NotebookLM-generated summaries as a companion reference. Learners who absorb information better through audio benefit from the Audio Overview feature, which converts any source set into a structured, conversational podcast episode on demand.
NotebookLM is a strong choice for document-grounded research, but these four tools take different approaches to AI-assisted knowledge work.
Searches the live internet and cites sources inline. Better when you need current information rather than deep analysis of documents you already have.
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More versatile for writing, coding, and general reasoning. File uploads are supported but the experience is less optimized for multi-document research workflows.
View demo →
Handles very long documents in a single context window without requiring separate source management. Strong for nuanced analysis and extended back-and-forth on complex material.
View demo →
Stores notes as plain Markdown files on your device. No AI by default, but plugin ecosystem is extensive. The right choice if data sovereignty and offline access are priorities.
FAQs on NotebookLM
Commonly asked questions about NotebookLM. Have more? Reach out and our team will be happy to help.
Is NotebookLM free to use?
NotebookLM is free for personal use with a Google account. Google has also released NotebookLM Plus as part of Google One AI Premium, which raises usage limits on Audio Overviews, notebooks, and sources per notebook.
What types of sources can I upload to NotebookLM?
NotebookLM accepts a wide range of source types: Google Docs, Google Slides, PDFs, plain text files, web URLs, YouTube video URLs, and copied text. Each notebook supports up to 50 sources and approximately 25 million words of content.
How does NotebookLM differ from ChatGPT?
NotebookLM grounds every answer in the specific documents you upload, while ChatGPT draws on broad training data. NotebookLM cites the source passage behind each response. ChatGPT is more versatile for general tasks; NotebookLM is more reliable when accuracy against specific documents matters.
What is an Audio Overview in NotebookLM?
An Audio Overview is a generated podcast-style conversation in which two AI hosts discuss your uploaded sources. NotebookLM analyzes your documents and produces a multi-minute audio file covering key themes, debates, and findings. You can generate one with a single click from any notebook.
Does NotebookLM share my documents with Google?
NotebookLM does not use your uploaded sources to train Google's AI models. Your notebook contents are private to your account. Google's standard privacy policies apply to account data, but the source material you upload is not fed into broader model training pipelines.
How does NotebookLM compare to Perplexity for research?
NotebookLM works exclusively with sources you provide, while Perplexity searches the live web in real time. Perplexity is better for finding current information; NotebookLM is better for deep analysis of a fixed document set where you need precise citations back to your own materials.