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Google expanded access to the business version of its popular NotebookLM app, now called NotebookLM Plus, targeting enterprises, teams and individuals who rely on the app's research tools.
The company also updated its podcast-like Audio Overview feature, which allows users to interact with the AI hosts and ask questions out loud.
The research tool, which lets people gather information into "notebooks" and ask questions with answers from the source material, launched in July last year on preview. It proved popular and became generally available in December. Originally built with Gemini 1.5, NotebookLM has been upgraded with an experimental version of Google 2.0 Flash, Google said.
After the Google team noticed a lot of different use cases for NotebookLM -- including many enterprise projects -- the company launched NotebookLM Plus for enterprises, teams and individuals who use the application a lot. NotebookLM Plus will have five times as many Audio Overviews, notebooks and sources per notebook.
Premium users can also customize the style and tone of notebooks, share notebooks with team members, and see usage analytics. Google said it also added more privacy and security features.
NotebookLM Plus can be accessed through Google Workspace or Google Agentspace. Next year, NotebookLM Plus will be included in the Google One AI Premium subscription.
Google announced what was then called NotebookLM Business in October as a pilot program for new business-focused uses for the application.
Audio interaction
Audio Overviews, where users can generate an audio conversation based on the information in the notebook, came out in September and became an instant hit. The podcast-y nature of the audio offered a way to help people digest complex information via a conversation between two people and proved very popular.
The tool often featured two AI-generated hosts chatting about the information in the notebooks; now, NotebookLM users can interject and ask questions using their voice to get more details or direct the conversation. Users can create a new Audio Overview, tap the "interactive" button and then click on "join" while listening, and the AI hosts will call on the user to ask their question.
Interacting with the hosts of AI Overviews will be available only on new Audio Overviews, not on existing ones.