Last October, Google began piloting a version of NotebookLM, its viral AI note-taking and research app, for businesses. Now the company is bringing NotebookLM to the enterprise with business-focused security and privacy features.
The enterprise NotebookLM, which Google calls NotebookLM Plus, offers the same experience as the consumer version but with added controls for access and data management. Employees can upload data and files to create notebooks, podcast-like audio summaries (called audio outlines), and more, and can search and share these projects with members of their organization.
Additional benefits include podcast-like audio summaries, five times more notebooks, and five times more data sources per notebook. Share team notebooks with usage analytics and the ability to customize the style and tone of AI-generated notebook responses.
NotebookLM for Enterprise is part of Agentspace, Google Cloud’s new platform for AI-powered ‘agents’. It launches in Early Access today.
“Millions of users have used NotebookLM to make sense of complex information,” Raj Pai, vice president of Cloud AI at Google, said in a press briefing. “And with the Agentspace integration, we are delivering these popular capabilities to our customers, meeting their compliance security and privacy requirements, and connecting them with their enterprise data and applications.”
In Agentspace, NotebookLM resides with agents that can analyze documents and emails, translate files, and import data from third-party repositories. Users can launch and search for agents from a single interface, and will soon be able to build custom agents using low-code tools, Google says.
For business, school, university, and enterprise NotebookLM users who don’t want to subscribe to Agentspace, NotebookLM Plus is also available in Google Workspace (Gemini for Workspace plan). Alternatively, organizational users can purchase NotebookLM Plus separately through Google Cloud.
Starting early next year, NotebookLM Plus will also be available to individual users who subscribe to Google’s $20 per month Google One AI Premium plan.
NotebookLM is one of Google’s most popular AI-based products in recent times.
A few months after its release, NotebookLM became a “competent” product on social media with its audio generation capabilities. This feature allows you to source video or audio files, URLs, or documents.
NotebookLM’s podcast-like audio generator has since been cloned several times, and the key leader behind the app has also left the company. However, Google continues to update NotebookLM with new features.
For example, on Friday, NotebookLM features a Source panel for managing imported information, a Chat panel for discussing that information through a conversational interface, and a Studio panel where users can create items (e.g. study guides, briefing documents, podcasts, etc.). Get audio like) with just one click.
Elsewhere in NotebookLM, there’s a new experimental feature that allows users to ask a synthetic host for more details or, expanding on the concept, to “join” a conversation with podcast-like audio. Here’s how it works:
- User creates a new audio outline.
- Tap the ‘Interactive Mode (Beta)’ button.
- While listening, tap Participate. A host will visit them.
- A user asks a question. The host responds with a personalized answer based on the data source.
- After responding, the hosts resume the back-and-forth banter.
Google points out that the feature, which is currently only available in English, doesn’t work with traditional audio outlines and can cause hosts to pause awkwardly before responding or “sometimes introduce inaccuracies.”
As always, it is incumbent on all users to fact-check their answers in AI-based tools like podcasts.
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