Google's NotebookLM Introduces Featured Notebooks: A New Era of AI-Powered Research and Learning

NotebookLM Opens Up to a Wider World. Meet Its New Curated Collection of Expert Insights

Blake has over a decade of experience writing for the web, with a focus on mobile phones, where he covered the smartphone boom of the 2010s and the broader tech scene. When he's not in front of a keyboard, you'll most likely find him playing video games, watching horror flicks, or hunting down a good churro. I started using Google's nifty NotebookLM to sort through and make sense of my documents, notes, and stray bits of information. Now, the AI tool is getting a new series of "featured notebooks" from a variety of sources for all of us to explore. Google announced the new feature on Monday, along with partnerships with respected publications to supply a curated collection of notebooks that will grow over time. NotebookLM is a unique and powerful notetaking and research tool, and it's my overall favorite piece of AI kit available. Google continues to introduce new features that make it into a powerhouse for learning and research that you can use for school, work, play or somewhere in between. Here's what you need to know about the new featured notebook collection. For more, don't miss how Google Lens can be your personal travel tour guide. Right now, the collection of featured notebooks is somewhat limited, though it will grow as time goes on. There are currently eight notebooks for you to explore: Each notebook allows you to explore the original sources, view a mind map, and listen to a pre-made Audio Overview. That's in addition to the ability to ask questions based on the sources in the chat, which is NotebookLM's simplest and most obvious use case. Google has partnered with both The Economist and The Atlantic, so you can expect to see additional collections of notebooks on the way from these publications. Last month, Google introduced the ability to mark your notebooks as public so you could share them with anyone you wanted to. Google said there have been over 140,000 public notebooks created. While that's a bit tough to assess without additional data points, the introduction of public notebooks paved the way for featured notebooks. Previously, your creations were available to you and only you, unless you'd upgraded to the premium version of NotebookLM. We know of at least one more feature that NotebookLM will eventually offer, and that's Video Overviews. Audio Overviews are already great -- so much so that Google has added them to more of its products. The introduction of Video Overviews will definitely appeal to those who could easily tune out when listening to audio or are more visual learners. There's no specific date attached to their arrival, outside of the "coming soon" timeline Google provided in a blog post during the Google I/O conference in May. The AI- and web-focused tech site Testing Catalog has been ahead of the game when it comes to discovering new features or features that Google is testing for NotebookLM. Here's what else they've managed to spot that could be on the way. AI flashcards: You can already create study guides with NotebookLM, but a new feature that could be of great benefit to students is the ability to generate flashcards on the fly based on your content sources. Discover sources via Google Drive: NotebookLM lets you find new sources in the Discover Sources section. You type in what you're looking for, and it scour the web for relevant content. Soon, that search may extend to Google Drive. Interactive Quizzes: Google's making NotebookLM a go-to assistant for students, and it might add interactive quizzes based on your sources. Microsoft Word doc support: Right now, when you're trying to select a source from Google Drive, you can only choose between Google Docs or Google Slides. In the future, it appears that NotebookLM might gain support for adding Microsoft Word docs that are also in your Drive, too.

Google's curated AI 'notebooks' talk you through topics from parenting to Shakespeare

Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. Google is partnering with authors, researchers, and publications to launch "featured" notebooks within its AI notetaking app, NotebookLM. These notebooks come pre-filled with research, and let you interact with the app's tools, including its AI podcast maker, to learn more about each topic. Google has released eight featured notebooks to start, including one focused on longevity from Super Agers author Eric Topol, another centered around parenting advice from Jacqueline Nesi's Substack newsletter, "Techno Sapiens," and a notebook on the complete works of Shakespeare. It also partnered with The Atlantic and The Economist to launch featured notebooks. Google started letting users share their notebooks publicly last month, and this most recent update appears to be a step toward allowing people to explore a range of premade notebooks rather than creating their own. More than 140,000 people shared public notebooks in the past four weeks, according to Google. "For newcomers to NotebookLM, the notebooks are a preview of how useful the product can be when you've assembled a collection of sources for whatever project you're working on," Steven Johnson, the editorial director for NotebookLM, writes in a post on X. "But it's also a preview of a potential future where there are thousands of expert-curated notebooks on all sorts of topics that you can add to your own collection, to have the knowledge you need on tap." The featured notebooks include original text from the source material, whether it's a book, play, newsletter, or online article. NotebookLM automatically summarizes this information and comes pre-loaded with notes about the topics discussed in the source material. You can also interact with NotebookLM's AI chatbot to ask questions about the information, as well as listen to pre-generated Audio Overviews, the podcast-like discussions featuring AI "hosts." Google says it plans on launching new featured notebooks in the future, which will include more from The Economist and The Atlantic.

NotebookLM now lets you chat with expert guides from top publishers, and Shakespeare - here's how

Google announced Monday that it is expanding the repertoire of NotebookLM, its AI-powered note-taking and research platform, to include the works of some prominent publishing names. Also: NotebookLM now lets you share your notebooks with anyone with a single link. Here's how The company is collaborating with a cohort of scientists, nonprofits, authors, and news publishers to deliver a series of featured notebooks for NotebookLM users. These notebooks cover subjects like science, practical travel tips, expert advice on parenting and wellbeing, finance, and the complete works of Shakespeare, Google wrote in a company blog post. The roster also includes featured notebooks from The Economist and The Atlantic, both of which have content partnerships with Google. The Economist's notebook will allow readers to explore and interact with articles from "The World Ahead 2025," the latest edition of the publication's annual special issue. Also: How to turn AI into your own research assistant with this free Google tool "This public notebook will feature our forward-looking journalism, examining what we view to be the most important trends and events shaping this year," Luke Bradley-Jones, president of The Economist, said in a statement. "This is one of many ways The Economist is experimenting with AI. We look forward to learning from this collaboration." Here's the full lineup for NotebookLM's new featured notebooks, according to the blog post: Users are now able to explore each of the featured notebooks through a suite of tools offered via NotebookLM, including AI-generated audio overviews and Mind Maps, a feature that creates illustrated diagrams connecting disparate themes and ideas extracted from your notes. You can also ask questions about the material you're studying directly to NotebookLM's integrated AI assistant and receive natural-language responses, just as you would when conversing with ChatGPT or Gemini. "Each collection lets you explore the content using all of NotebookLM's signature features. You can read the original source material, but you can also pose questions or explore specific topics in depth, and get answers grounded in the original material, with citations," said Google. "You can listen to pre-generated Audio Overviews, or explore the main themes using our Mind Maps feature." Also: You can turn your Google search into a podcast now - here's how Google introduced another feature for GoogleLM last month, which allows users to share their personal notebooks through public links. That feature has already been used more than 140,000 times, according to Monday's blog post. The Atlantic and The Economist are two major publishers that have opted to join forces with a leading AI developer at a time when generative AI tools are transforming online search, which has long been a vital link connecting readers with online journalism. Also: I used Google's photo-to-video AI tool on my selfie - and it made me do the tango News Corp, Axel Springer, and the Financial Times, among others, have signed content-licensing deals with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Meanwhile, other prominent publishers have opted to sue AI companies for what they view as the illegal use of their copyrighted material to train AI models. The New York Times, for example, has sued OpenAI and its partner Microsoft. ZDNET's parent company, Ziff Davis, has also sued OpenAI. Get the morning's top stories in your inbox each day with our Tech Today newsletter.

NotebookLM Adds New Guides on Shakespeare, Finance, Parenting, More

These preloaded notebooks give you a quick overview of interesting topics while saving you the trouble of finding sources and organizing thoughts. Google is bringing "Featured notebooks" to its AI NotebookLM app to let users access pre-loaded notes on topics such as wellness, finance, literature, science, and more. These notes are created in partnership with authors, researchers, publications, and nonprofits from around the world, and they began rolling out on Monday. You can access them from the new Featured notebooks tab on the homepage. The initial lineup of curated notebooks includes a study guide on The Complete Works of William Shakespeare for students and scholars, longevity advice from bestselling author Eric Topol, parenting advice from psychology professor Jacqueline Nesi, analysis of Q1 earnings reports of top 50 public companies worldwide, a science fan's guide to Yellowstone National Park, and more. Each of these notebooks comes with links to source websites, as usual. You can also ask follow-up questions for each of the topics and listen to an AI-generated, two-person podcast on the same. The audio overview of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, for example, discusses the plots of some of his most celebrated plays, such as Othello and King Lear. You can also click on the Mind Maps feature on the bottom right of the Notes section to see a visual structure of the topic, which can help you organize your thoughts. In the future, Google says it will add more pre-loaded notebooks, including collections from The Economist and The Atlantic. "The books of the future won't just be static: some will talk to you, some will evolve with you, and some will exist in forms we can't imagine now," said Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic. "We're delighted to partner with Google in its pioneering work on this front." Google released NotebookLM in July 2023 to "reimagine what notetaking software might look like." Since then, it has added some nifty features to make the tool more interesting. The Audio Overviews feature, for instance, kickstarts an AI-generated podcast between two bots. It was updated with an Interactive Mode (still in Beta) that allows you to interrupt and interact with the AI podcasters. Then came Discover Sources, which allows you to start creating notebooks just by describing what you're interested in. More recently, NotebookLM introduced a feature that lets you to make your notes public. Google says the feature has led to the creation of 140,000 public notebooks in just the last four weeks.

NotebookLM's newest feature might just completely change how you research online (in the best way)

Google's AI-powered research assistant, NotebookLM, is truly one of a kind and has managed to convince me that AI can genuinely be a game-changer for productivity. What a lot of people don't know about the tool, though, is just how new it still is. Google launched it as an experimental Labs project during Google I/O 2023, and the tech giant took over a year to drop its experimental label, in October 2024. Given that it's only been around nine months since the tool "officially" launched, it's no surprise that the NotebookLM team has been working tirelessly to update it with new features and improvements. Just a couple of days ago, a leaked internal memo hinted that some of the features the team has been teasing might drop any day now. Though none of those features are here just yet, Google just added a new Featured Notebooks section to the tool, and it might just change how you research online forever. NotebookLM rolls out featured notebooks to help you research smarter As announced via a post on The Keyword, Google is rolling out a new NotebookLM feature that's designed to make assembling "high-quality sources to help you explore your interests" easier than ever. The team over at Google has been working with "respected authors, researchers, publications, and nonprofits" to create featured notebooks. At the moment, they're launching eight featured notebooks, all of them catering to a different area of interest and audience. Here are the eight featured notebooks: * Longevity advice from Eric Topol, bestselling author of "Super Agers" * Expert analysis and predictions for the year 2025 as shared in The World Ahead annual report by The Economist * An advice notebook based on bestselling author Arthur C. Brooks' "How to Build A Life" columns in The Atlantic * A science fan's guide to visiting Yellowstone National Park, complete with geological explanations and biodiversity insights * An overview of long-term trends in human wellbeing published by the University of Oxford-affiliated project, Our World In Data * Science-backed parenting advice based on psychology professor Jacqueline Nesi's popular Substack newsletter, Techno Sapiens * The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, for students and scholars to explore * A notebook tracking the Q1 earnings reports from the top 50 public companies worldwide, for financial analysts and market watchers alike You can explore one of the featured notebooks by simply clicking the linked text above. All of these notebooks have been created with a bunch of sources, which makes them a much better option than just relying on scattered search results or random links. For instance, the last featured notebook has 91 different sources! By heading to any of the featured notebooks linked above, you can interact with their content and sources using all of NotebookLM's features. If you're someone who learns better from podcasts, you can convert the notebooks' sources into Audio Overviews. One of the biggest complaints I have with Audio Overviews is how long they can take to generate sometimes, especially the longer ones. Thankfully, the Audio Overviews within these featured notebooks are all pre-generated, meaning you won't have to wait too long once you open them. Similarly, a Mind Map has been pre-generated too, along with the different Notes formats like Briefing Docs and FAQ. You can also ask any questions you may have about the sources, just like you can with any NotebookLM notebook. Of course, citations will always be present next to the answers, and hovering over them will show you exactly where in the source the information came from. You'll also be able to read the original source material within NotebookLM, which means you won't have to switch back and forth between tabs. Google mentioned in the blog post that it'll continue to introduce new featured notebooks, incluidng new collections from its partnerships with The Economist and The Atlantic. The Featured Notebooks will start rolling out to users on desktop today.

Google adds featured notebooks on selected topics to NotebookLM

Google is adding what it calls "featured notebooks" to NotebookLM as a way to demo its AI-powered software and offer interactive, high-quality resources on everything from personal advice to William Shakespeare. The company tried something similar after its developer conference in May, when it created a NotebookLM notebook trained on everything that was announced at Google I/O 2025. The new featured notebooks have their own dedicated tab on the NotebookLM homepage and were created in partnership with "respected authors, researchers, publications and nonprofits around the world," Google says. Like all NotebookLM projects, you can interact with the raw sources that make up the notebook's knowledge base, ask questions about topics in a chat interface or view an AI-generated summary, audio overview or flow chart for more ways to interact with the content. The first round of featured notebooks included a notebook on longevity advice trained on the book Super Agers, a notebook on 2025 predictions trained on The Economist's annual "The World Ahead" report and an advice notebook trained on The Atlantic's "How to Build a Life" column, among several other options. Your mileage may vary on how useful each featured notebook is -- I found the Shakespeare notebook to be the most fun to play with -- but each is a good representation of the quality and volume of material that needs to be uploaded to NotebookLM for it to work well. Google introduced NotebookLM in 2023 as an experiment in building an AI tool that relies on sources you upload, rather than whatever the company managed to scrape off the internet. The idea is that chats about topics in NotebookLM would be less prone to hallucinations than what an AI Overview in Google Search spits out. Or at the very least, it would be easier to check the AI's answers because the source material is a click away. NotebookLM became really popular when Google introduced Audio Overviews in September 2024, AI-generated podcasts about the material uploaded to a NotebookLM notebook. Since then, the company has expanded the tool at a rapid clip, introducing mobile apps and the ability to share public notebooks. Clearly, Google is committed to NotebookLM and featured notebooks are a further attempt to model how the AI-powered tool can actually be useful. Google says featured notebooks are available to people using the desktop version of NotebookLM today and more featured notebooks will be added in the future.

Google's underrated AI tool just got a major upgrade with featured notebooks

The new feature is desktop-only for now and follows the recent rollout of public notebook sharing. NotebookLM was already doing a good job as anything from a personal research assistant to an advisor on your car maintenance. But Google keeps building as ever, and the AI-powered note-taking tool now also comes preloaded with curated expert guides. Google has announced a new wave of "featured notebooks" for NotebookLM, offering collections of hand-picked content created in collaboration with researchers, authors, nonprofits, and major publishers. The new notebooks span a broad range of topics, including scientific guides, historical analysis, and even the complete works of Shakespeare. The launch lineup includes longevity advice from Eric Topol, data-driven insights from Our World In Data, parenting tips from psychologist Jacqueline Nesi, and predictions from The Economist's The World Ahead 2025 report. There's also a Yellowstone travel guide with geological and biodiversity insights and an earnings tracker covering top global companies. Each notebook can be explored as usual with NotebookLM's core features, letting you ask questions, explore content through mind maps, and generate Audio Overviews -- AI-generated podcasts that bring your notes to life. The new collections follow Google's recent rollout of public notebook sharing, which the company says has already led to over 140,000 public notebooks in just four weeks. More featured notebooks -- including additional collaborations with The Economist and The Atlantic -- are expected soon. We're big fans of NotebookLM as a hidden gem among Google's AI tools, though we were a bit nonplussed by the Android app. Featured notebooks are rolling out now and only on desktop, which is just one more reason to stick to the web version for now.

NotebookLM is getting even more powerful by bringing in the experts

While Gemini tends to get most of the attention when it comes to the Google's AI work, there are other interesting projects from the brand that deserve recognition as well. NotebookLM is a fascinating tool that's meant to be a virtual research assistant. It compiles tons of important information on a subject into notebooks, and then you can interact with the content in a meaningful way. Related Everything you need to know about NotebookLM, Google's 'AI-powered research assistant' This ain't your granddad's notebook Posts 1 The best part is that, like other AI projects Google is working on, NotebookLM frequently gets updates, making it better and better with each new addition. Today, Google shared that it would now offer "featured notebooks", which will deliver curated content from experts in the field, ensuring users are getting the best information possible. NotebookLM is getting major boost As far as how that information is sourced, Google shares that "featured notebooks" will feature information curated from "respected authors, researchers, publications and nonprofits." As far as some of the featured notebooks now available, there are topics covering Shakespeare, Yellow Stone National Park, and more. Featured notebooks will act in the same way that standard notebooks work. Users will be able to interact with the content in a number of helpful ways, and can even transform the content with the help of Audio Overview. Now, the featured notebook library available will be small at first, but Google promises that the content should grow over time. While NotebookLM is still in its infancy, it's very clear that this can be a powerful tool when it comes to everyday work and research. Not only is it powerful on its own, but Google has the ability to integrate the tool into its other products, like Google Docs and Slides, creating a variety of new ways that it can be used. Once frustrating, research work is now made even easier and is also quite accurate. Although it was first introduced on desktop, NotebookLM can now be accessed on mobile as well through a dedicated app. You can give it a try on your phone or tablet by downloading the app through the Google Play Store. Explore notebooks, add your own, and find a new way to get through your content.

You Can Now Explore Expert-Curated Notebooks on NotebookLM

Initially, Google is offering eight different public notebooks Google's NotebookLM is getting a new feature to help users learn about new topics without having to look for high-quality sources. Announced on Monday, the new addition is dubbed featured notebooks, and these are a list of sources curated by domain experts that users can directly open as a new notebook. The Mountain View-based tech giant aims to make learning via the artificial intelligence (AI) platform easier with this offering. Initially, the company is offering eight different topics to choose from. In June, the platform added an option to let users share their notebooks publicly using a URL, similar to how file sharing on Google Docs works. Now, building on that, Google is adding featured notebooks to NotebookLM. In a blog post, the company said that it is working with authors, researchers, publications, and nonprofits across the globe to create these notebooks. At the onset, the tech giant is offering eight featured notebooks covering topics ranging from scientific explorations to travel guides and advice from experts. These notebooks can only be accessed via the desktop interface for now, and there is no word on when these would be available on the app. The feature is free for all users, so no subscription is required. Let us take a look at the featured notebooks currently available: Notably, each of these featured notebooks support all the NotebookLM features including study guides, FAQ creation, chatbot-based conversations, mindmap generation, and Audio Overviews. Featured notebooks can be accessed by visiting the NotebookLM home page and tapping on the featured notebooks section.