Google NotebookLM Launches AI-Powered Slide Deck and Infographic Features

NotebookLM turned my research into slick visuals - but at what cost to my brain?

It remains to be seen whether they will help or hinder learning. As a reporter covering AI, I've had to get used to feeling deeply impressed and a little unsettled. There are few tools that have evoked this strange cocktail of emotions in me more than Google's NotebookLM. Having debuted just a little over two years ago, the platform feels like an early glimmer of what truly useful AI will look like in the future. If you've never tried it, think of it like a study or research assistant that can quickly generate materials that fit your particular learning style, and that can (in theory) accelerate the process of you coming to grips with a new subject. Also: I found an open-source NotebookLM alternative that's powerful, private - and free On Thursday, Google announced in posts on NotebookLM's dedicated X account that the platform had been updated with new slide decks and infographics features. They were initially available exclusively to Google AI Pro subscribers -- a plan which comes with a one-month free trial before a $20 per month cost kicks in -- but the company announced in another X post Friday that they've been rolled out to all users. Generally speaking, one of the most prevalent sales pitches for AI that you'll hear from Silicon Valley execs and other true believers is that it's an aid and enabler to human cognition -- that it amplifies innate human intelligence, reduces the time between ideation and production, and makes it possible for just about anyone to turn even their most far out creative ideas into something tangible. (You could also make a strong argument that it atrophies cognition and creativity by doing all the really hard work for you, but we'll get to that later.) NotebookLM is a great example of this line of thinking. The bio in its X account reads: "Think smarter, not harder." Also: I used NotebookLM for an entire month - here's why it really is a game changer The Audio Overview feature, for example, which produces lifelike audio discussions based on your sources, can be useful for anyone who considers themselves to be more of an auditory learner or who prefers listening to podcasts and audiobooks over reading. The two new features that were announced Thursday -- both of which are powered by Google's new Nano Banana Pro image-generating model -- are more useful for visual learners (or anyone who's procrastinated on building a presentation and needs something quickly). Let's start with the slide deck feature. I wanted to give the underlying AI a bit of a challenge by seeing how well it could synthesize and communicate, especially complicated information, to a non-expert, so I dug up a preprint paper posted online earlier this year titled: "Primordial black holes as dark matter candidates: Multi-frequency constraints from cosmic radiation backgrounds." Needless to say, the subject matter is intensely technical -- far, far beyond my own humble physics education. I uploaded the PDF of the paper into NotebookLM to create a new "notebook," then I clicked on the "Slide Deck" icon at the far right of my screen. That icon includes an edit option, also at the right, which I clicked to specify the kind of deck I was looking for. Here's the prompt I went with: "Create a presentation that includes a high-level overview of this recent 'Primordial black holes as dark matter candidates' paper. Try to make the material accessible to the average reader -- someone who has a casual interest in cosmology but isn't an expert in the underlying math/physics." (You can also choose a length -- "Short," "Default," or "Long" -- and from a long list of languages.) Then I clicked "Generate." Also: NotebookLM's powerful Deep Research upgrade lets it search the web and create a full report - here's how The system took 10 or 15 minutes to create the deck, but the results were (unsurprisingly) impressive. The deck was presented as a kind of cosmic dimestore detective novel, titled "The Case of the Missing Matter." The material was organized and presented in a way that was much more digestible for a layperson than the charts and figures presented in the actual paper. It's easy to imagine myself as a university college student using the deck as a primer to get a high-level overview of the paper's main arguments before diving into the paper itself, or the authors using it as an approachable introduction for non-experts. (As a side note, you can also download and share AI-generated decks in NotebookLM, or play them as a slideshow.) Of course, as I've already made clear, I'm not a physicist, so I had to take NotebookLM's word that it wasn't completely hallucinating any of the more arcane details which it was purportedly summarizing from the paper. For my second experiment, therefore, I decided to test how well the system would do with a subject I understand reasonably well. I'd been writing a fair bit about consciousness, and so I prompted NotebookLM to generate an infographic that succinctly explains and visualizes the differences between "physicalism" (a school of thought that holds that the feeling of subjective experience is generated by physical processes in the brain) and "idealism" (which holds that the physical world emerges from consciousness). I uploaded two web links to NotebookLM -- the entries for physicalism and idealism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive -- and entered the following prompt: "Can you please generate a simple infographic providing a broad overview of the debate between physicalism and idealism as it pertains to research into the mind and brain? Please try to make the subject approachable and engaging to a non-expert." For the infographic feature, you're able to customize by orientation (Landscape, Portrait, or Square), "level of detail" ("Concise," "Standard," and "Detailed," the last of which is currently in beta), and again, language. I went with "Landscape" and "Standard." Based on my own knowledge of the subject matter, the resulting image didn't contain any hallucinated information, and it provided a nice summary of both the physicalist and idealist worldviews. There were, however, some very minor visual errors and stylistic details that I would personally want to clean up before presenting it to an audience, if that were my end goal. Unfortunately, there's currently no option to edit existing infographics. Clearly, the new visual aid features can be helpful for someone who's looking to learn the basics of a new subject. But most people probably aren't going to be using them for self-education; more often than not, they'll likely be used for more practical purposes at school or at work. With that in mind, I uploaded a link to my personal website and asked the system to generate an infographic illustrating my journalistic career, which could be submitted to a hiring manager as a supplement to a resume and a cover letter. In broad strokes, it generated an accurate and clean-looking mage that I could see myself using in a future job search. It wasn't perfect; it was admittedly a bit on the flattering side, and there were some minor glitches in the finer text -- it misspelled "Berkeley" as "Borkeley," for example -- but on the whole it seemed like a valuable asset that not so long ago probably would've taken hours and a fluency in graphic design to be able to be able to create. I mentioned above that NotebookLM sometimes leaves me feeling unsettled. That was definitely the case here, too. As a writer, the most rewarding and enriching experiences of my career have been those times when I've had to step outside of my intellectual comfort zone and tussle with new and challenging subjects. Advanced math and physics aren't subjects that I'm typically able to intuitively grasp, but I enjoy the challenge of sitting with a paper for hours or days on end and trying to comprehend it -- or at least comprehend it well enough to be able to communicate it at a high level to a general audience. Also: You can now give NotebookLM more instructions - here's why that's a game changer NotebookLM's slide deck of the "Primordial black holes as dark matter candidates" paper was probably a roughly faithful overview of the paper, but I can't help but feel that it was an extremely thin substitute for putting in the hard and sometimes uncomfortable work of actually wrestling with the paper itself, whether I was trying to educate myself or translate the information into an approachable presentation that I was going to present to an audience. Friction is a vital ingredient for learning. And tools like NotebookLM remove a whole lot of friction. In other words, it's not at all clear that LLMs are genuinely helping us learn, or if they're just making us feel like we're learning while they actually make us intellectually lazier. And there's evidence showing that they could be hindering users' memory recall and critical thinking skills. But again, self-education is unlikely to be the majority use case for these new visual aid tools. Far more prevalent will probably be those instances in which users turn to them to quickly generate materials to be used for school- or work-related tasks. The infographic, as a supplement to a resume and cover letter scenario outlined above, is an example of one that could conceivably have genuine value for the user without taking too much of a toll on their mental flexibility, since that would ordinarily be the kind of task that's more time-consuming and tedious than cognitively demanding. They could also be useful as a shortcut for, say, quickly generating a visual aid for an upcoming presentation at the office or in the classroom. But here too, one should beware of the degree to which they're offloading the hard cognitive work onto AI. As with all LLM-powered tools, the new features from NotebookLM might save you a lot of time and mental effort, but it could also very well be the case that a lot of time and mental effort are the two most vital ingredients in any piece of high-quality original work. My best advice: Use the new features -- and AI in general -- with caution, and only as a backup to your own brainpower.

NotebookLM's killer new feature just made PowerPoint obsolete (and Canva too)

Google has been hard at work lately, rolling out NotebookLM feature after feature. Interestingly, these aren't minor tweaks (although there have been a bunch of small updates too). Instead, they're additions that have clearly been carefully thought through, solving pain points NotebookLM users have been expressing for the longest time. The thing I've always liked most about the team behind NotebookLM is that every feature has a purpose. It's never felt like AI for the sake of AI, which is why it's managed to replace so many apps I used to rely on. Today, Google just launched two killer features that have made Microsoft PowerPoint and Canva obsolete. NotebookLM can now create presentation slides for you As announced via a post on X (formerly Twitter), NotebookLM's team revealed two new outputs you can generate in the Studio panel. First up, let's talk about Slide Decks, which I found super, duper impressive. This feature lets you turn any of the sources you upload to your notebook into a detailed presentation. Now, you might think, "Hey, there are already tools that can generate presentation slides for you." And while that's a completely valid question, there's a major reason why NotebookLM's Slide Decks feature is miles ahead -- it sticks strictly to your sources. As with other NotebookLM features, the Slide Decks feature only references the sources you feed it. This means that the slides it generates will only consist of the material included in your notebook. While this feature has been rolled out completely to Pro users, it'll be rolled out to free users in the coming weeks. Given that I'm a Pro subscriber, the first thing I had to do was obviously try it out for myself. And the results were... insane. The presentation slides included a bunch of infographics like clipart, graphs, Venn diagrams, and more. The slides were all cohesive and didn't look like the basic AI-generated slides you often see elsewhere. Each slide flowed naturally from one to the next, with clear headings, well-organized content, and visuals that actually added context rather than feeling tacked on. With PowerPoint and other presentation software, you need to spend time manually deciding on designs and content. Using other AI tools is often not the best option, since a lot of the information they include can be generic or pulled from random sources, meaning you still have to spend time editing and fact-checking. So, this feature will genuinely transform your workflow if you frequently create presentations manually. The feature is powered by Google's Nano Banana Pro model, which also just launched today! Related Until NotebookLM, I never believed AI could be this game-changing for productivity It transformed my view of AI, for the better. Posts 7 By Mahnoor Faisal May 26, 2025 NotebookLM generates visual summaries of your sources Another feature NotebookLM got today is called Infographics. This feature lets you create "high-quality, visual summaries of your sources." For instance, here's what was generated when I created an infographic of my lecture slides for a course I'm taking this semester: Given that my notebook only consisted of seven sources, it isn't surprising that it wasn't too detailed. However, X users have shared a bunch of infographics they've generated, and it's clear that the feature is incredible. Similar to other NotebookLM features, both Slide Decks and Infographics are customizable too. You can find both these options in the Studio panel, and clicking the pencil icon on the relevant tile will give you different customization options. Both Slide Decks and Infographics have been completely rolled out to Pro users, and will be rolling out to free users in the coming weeks.

This Google Tool Just Made Creating Presentations Way Too Easy - Phandroid

Staring at a blank slide deck while your deadline creeps closer? Google's NotebookLM just got an upgrade that might make manual presentation building feel obsolete. The AI-powered research tool now creates presentation slides automatically from your uploaded documents and notes. NotebookLM started as an AI note-taking assistant for students and researchers. Now it handles the tedious work of transforming your sources into structured, presentation-ready slide decks complete with talking points and visual summaries. The process is straightforward. Upload your content to NotebookLM, which accepts PDFs, Google Docs, Slides, text files, web URLs, YouTube videos, and audio files. Then prompt the AI with something like "Generate a 7-slide presentation summarizing key points from all sources" or "Create talking points for a sales pitch." NotebookLM analyzes everything using Google's Gemini AI model and produces a structured outline with bullets, visuals, and speaker notes. You can export these directly to Google Slides or PowerPoint. The tool even supports narrated presentations with AI-generated voiceovers. What makes this different from typical AI is accuracy. NotebookLM grounds its responses in your uploaded sources, which means fewer hallucinations and more reliable content. It provides citations and pulls quotes directly from your materials. Students prepping reports can upload research papers and generate summary slides in minutes. Marketers building pitches can feed the AI customer data, competitor analysis, and product specs to create tailored decks. Teachers can flip classroom materials into engaging presentations without starting from scratch. Researchers summarizing studies benefit from NotebookLM's ability to synthesize information across multiple sources into cohesive narratives. The tool handles the heavy lifting of organizing complex information into digestible formats. NotebookLM keeps evolving. Beyond slide creation, it searches inside Google Drive files, generates podcast-style audio summaries, and creates study guides from source materials. The recent updates also include multiple visual styles for video overviews, from watercolor to anime. College students can access NotebookLM Plus for free through Google's education program, while other users get the base version at no cost. Premium features like extended context windows and advanced customization require a subscription. If you spend hours building presentations manually, NotebookLM's slide creation feature is worth trying. It handles formatting, organization, and content synthesis while you focus on refining the message. Just upload your sources, describe what you need, and let the AI do the rest.

NotebookLM with Gemini 3 Builds Rich Infographics & Tailored Slide Decks Quick

What if creating stunning, branded infographics or tailored slide decks took mere minutes instead of hours? With Google's latest update to NotebookLM, powered by the innovative Gemini 3 model and the precision-driven Nano Banana Pro, that vision is now a reality. These advancements don't just tweak the platform, they transform it, making high-quality, professional-grade content creation accessible to anyone, regardless of design expertise. Imagine a marketing team summarizing quarterly performance metrics or a sales rep crafting a client-specific pitch deck, tasks that once required painstaking manual effort can now be completed with unparalleled speed and accuracy. This isn't just an upgrade; it's a reinvention of how we approach productivity in the digital age. Below Marketing Against the Grain show you how NotebookLM's integration of Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro is reshaping the landscape of AI-driven content creation. From generating visually compelling infographics to producing audience-specific presentations, these tools are designed to save time, elevate creativity, and streamline workflows. You'll discover how the platform's ability to interpret complex data and seamlessly align visuals with brand guidelines is empowering businesses to focus on strategy rather than execution. But what does this mean for the future of AI-powered tools, and where does NotebookLM still fall short? Let's unpack the potential, and the possibilities, of this innovative update. At the core of this update lies Nano Banana Pro, a model engineered to deliver exceptional precision in both image and text rendering. By using advanced contextual understanding, it ensures that visuals align seamlessly with user prompts and content requirements. For instance, when tasked with creating an infographic, Nano Banana Pro can analyze complex datasets and transform them into clear, visually compelling graphics. This capability is particularly beneficial for marketers who depend on high-quality visuals to effectively communicate strategies, trends, and insights. The model's ability to interpret and visualize data with such accuracy significantly reduces the time and effort traditionally required for manual design processes. NotebookLM continues to serve as a centralized platform for organizing diverse content, but its functionality has been significantly enhanced with the integration of Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro. Users can now upload or link various content sources, such as documents, websites, and videos, into a single, unified notebook. This streamlined approach simplifies content management and retrieval, making it easier to access and use information. The addition of these advanced models allows users to generate custom infographics and slide decks directly from their organized materials. This eliminates the need for external tools, saving valuable time and making sure a seamless workflow. For example, a project manager can consolidate multiple reports and data sources into NotebookLM and quickly produce a polished presentation tailored to their team's needs. Find more information on AI marketing by browsing our extensive range of articles, guides and tutorials. One of the standout features of this update is the ability to create branded infographics that are both visually appealing and contextually accurate. NotebookLM analyzes user prompts and linked content to produce graphics that adhere to specific brand guidelines, including custom colors, themes, and fonts. This functionality is particularly advantageous for marketing teams, allowing them to generate professional visuals for social media posts, strategy presentations, and campaign reports. For instance, a marketing team tasked with summarizing quarterly performance metrics can use NotebookLM to produce an infographic that incorporates branded elements such as logos, color schemes, and typography. This process, which traditionally required hours of manual design work, can now be completed in just a few clicks, allowing teams to focus on strategy and execution. The slide deck generation feature is another key enhancement that transforms how presentations are created. NotebookLM can produce contextual, audience-specific slide decks by drawing insights from the user's content library. These presentations include custom illustrations, relevant quotes, and data visualizations tailored to the intended audience. This capability is particularly useful for sales teams, who can quickly generate client-specific presentations that highlight key talking points and data insights. For example, a sales representative preparing for a client meeting can use NotebookLM to create a polished presentation complete with charts, graphs, and tailored messaging, all within minutes. This not only saves time but also ensures a high standard of quality and professionalism. The enhanced features of NotebookLM have broad applications across various business functions. Key use cases include: These capabilities empower businesses to produce high-quality content that resonates with their target audiences while optimizing time and resource allocation. By automating time-consuming tasks, NotebookLM allows teams to focus on strategic initiatives and creative problem-solving. Despite its impressive advancements, NotebookLM is not without limitations. Generated content may still require minor adjustments to meet specific needs, particularly for highly nuanced or specialized tasks. Additionally, the platform currently lacks built-in editing tools for slide decks, necessitating the use of external software for final refinements. These limitations highlight areas for potential improvement as Google continues to refine its AI offerings. Future updates could address these gaps by incorporating more robust editing capabilities and expanding the platform's functionality to accommodate a wider range of use cases. The integration of Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro into NotebookLM reflects a broader trend in the evolution of AI-driven content creation. As these technologies continue to advance, their applications are expected to extend beyond business and marketing into industries such as education, healthcare, and entertainment. Google's ongoing investment in AI innovation suggests that tools like NotebookLM will become increasingly versatile, offering users even greater value and efficiency. Future developments may include deeper integration of Nano Banana Pro across Google's suite of products, further enhancing the platform's ability to automate and elevate creative processes. The updates to NotebookLM, powered by Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro, represent a significant leap forward in AI-driven content creation. By allowing users to produce high-quality infographics and slide decks with minimal effort, these advancements address the growing demand for efficient, visually engaging, and contextually relevant content. While there is still room for improvement, the current capabilities of NotebookLM underscore its potential as an indispensable tool for businesses and marketers. By automating complex tasks and streamlining workflows, NotebookLM is helping organizations achieve new levels of productivity and creativity in their content creation efforts.