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Jasmine is Software and PC Hardware Author at XDA with years of tech reporting experience ranging from AI chatbots right down to gaming hardware, she’s covered just about everything.

Whether it’s breaking news about the latest AMD NPUs or creating video tutorials on social media platforms, Jasmine has contributed to the world of AI and tech in a variety of ways including interviewing the CEO of Razer, AMD’s Director of Product Marketing and the VP of Lenovo. Passionate about gaming and PC technology, she has built countless computers, keyboards and other peripherals - knowing them inside and out.

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NotebookLM went absolutely viral earlier this year and has already become so many people’s favorite learning tool. You can use it to turn your notes into a fun and entertaining video or podcast, and now everyone has seen the viral clips of AI hosts bantering, and it’s fun for 10 minutes, but does it actually help you get your work done?

NotebookLM isn’t just a summarizer; it’s a grounded reasoning engine, and its true power lies in its source-grounded architecture. Unlike ChatGPT, it cannot look at the internet; it can only look at the documents you’re providing it with, making it a hallucination-free zone for professionals. While an educational AI podcast is great, NotebookLM can do so much more than this.

Cross-referencing

Forget analyzing the bulk of data yourself

NotebookLM has an absolute superpower in the form of multi-source analysis. Let’s say you have ten different PDFs: a competitor’s financial report, three technical whitepapers, and five internal meeting transcripts. Instead of asking for a summary of each of these different documents, only to be left comparing them all yourself, you can use NotebookLM to actually cross-reference them all.

For example, ask a query like: Based on the Q3 meeting notes, where do our engineering goals conflict with the technical limitations mentioned in White Paper B?

And bang — instead of having to look at each of the summaries yourself and figure this out, NotebookLM will do it for you without the risk of hallucination because all it has access to are your documents. Think of it as a virtual librarian who has memorized every single word of your specific documents and nothing else. It really is the key to intense analysis.

Another benefit is the ability to actually join the conversation, which is called interactive mode. Rather than hitting Generate to create an audio overview of your information, you can turn the hosts into mentors. You’re able to interrupt the audio midstream to ask for clarification on a specific point they just made.

You can even ask your hosts to act in a certain way, guiding their personality and therefore the results that you get — if you want someone more critical to analyze your work, just ask. If you want someone who’ll soften the blow so your errors don’t feel as intense, NotebookLM can do that.

Synthesizing

NotebookLM can generate a whole load of useful tools

Another feature where NotebookLM shines is building learning guides. Rather than just simple text summaries or even audio overviews, you can ask NotebookLM to create useful tools, like mind maps and flashcards. Not only can these be great for studying, but they can also help you remember notes for an upcoming presentation.

Whilst doing this, you can also ask NotebookLM to hunt for the gaps in your work. Use the AI to find out what isn’t there. For example, upload your project plan and ask NotebookLM to identify any issues like risks that are being ignored or similar theories that should be touched on.

NotebookLM can create many tools for you; rather than just summarizing, you can use it to draft briefing documents or FAQs that combine insights from five different sources into a cohesive page. Just about anything you might need from NotebookLM, it can generate it for you.

Another great benefit of this AI tool that sets it apart from a multitude of other chatbots is the fact that your data is not used to train their global models. If you upload your internal company data to NotebookLM, only you can see it. This makes it a viable option for lawyers, doctors, engineers, or anyone else who has sensitive data that they would otherwise not put into a standard chatbot. While it’s not as safe and secure as a self-hosted LLM, NotebookLM is the next best thing.

More than just the basics

Be sure that you’re using this tool to its full advantage

NotebookLM is a great tool, but so many people use it for its most basic features. Yes, it can read your notes and summarize them, that’s great, but it can also do so much more. The audio overview is simply a gateway drug, but use all of its features, and it is a real productivity engine. It can synthesize documents for you, highlight patterns you missed because you were too busy taking notes in the first place, and even generate your own private mentor.

If you’re yet to give NotebookLM a try, then be sure to consider all of its features when you give it a go. If you’re already using the AI tool without taking advantage of everything it has to offer, then maybe it’s time to really explore the interface and take a gander at everything it has to offer.