Google’s NotebookLM is now an even smarter assistant and better fact checker
Google updates its NotebookLM writing assistant with improved performance and new features. It now runs on the company’s Gemini 1.5 Pro model, the same AI that powers the Gemini Advanced chatbot.
Thanks to this functionalitythe assistant is more contextually aware, allowing you to “ask questions about (the) images, graphs, and diagrams in your source” to gain a better understanding.
Although Gemini 1.5 Pro is part of NotebookLM, it is unknown whether this means the AI will accept longer text prompts or create more detailed answers. After all, Google’s AI can process context windows of up to a million tokens. We reached out to the tech giant to ask if people can expect support for larger prompts.
Prompts remain largely the same, although they now provide inline quotes in the form of circled numbers. Clicking on any of these quotes will take you directly to supporting passages in source documents. That way you can double-check the material to see if NotebookLM has done things right.
AI hallucinations remain a problem for the technology, so it’s important that people can verify the outcomes. When it comes to images, opening the citation will cause the source image to appear in a small window next to the text.
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Support for resources is being expanded to now include “Google Slides and Web URLs” in addition to PDFs, text files, and Google Docs. A new feature is also being added called Notebook Guide. This gives you the ability to rearrange the data you enter into a specific format, such as a set of frequently asked questions or a study guide. It can be quite useful.
The Guide sees more changes being made, although these are not included in the initial announcement. For example, you can have up to 50 different resources per project, and each resource can be up to 500,000 words long. according to TheVerge. Previously, users could only access five resources at a time, so it’s a big step forward.
Raiza Martin, senior product manager at Google Labs, also told the publication that “NotebookLM is a closed system.” This means that the AI will not perform web searches beyond what you, the user, give it in a prompt. Any response it generates relates only to the information it has at hand.
The latest update to NotebookLM is now live and is rolling out to “more than 200 countries and territories around the world.” You can go to the AI official website to try out the new features. But keep in mind that NotebookLM is still considered experimental and you may encounter some quirks. For example, TheVerge claimed that the URL source feature was not working in their demo. However, our experience is that the tool worked fine.
Check out Ny Breaking’s list of the best business laptops for 2024 if you plan to use the Assistant at work.