Google’s NotebookLM can now summarize YouTube videos and audio files

Kelechi Edeh -

Extracting key insights from long YouTube videos or podcasts can be a tedious task for many, especially students, researchers, and professionals.

While YouTube offers a wealth of educational content to its 2.4 billion users, it lacks built-in tools for summarizing or organizing this information efficiently, leaving users to manually sift through long-form media.

In a bid to address this issue, Google has rolled out a major update to its NotebookLM tool, which includes support for public YouTube videos and audio files.

Thanks to this update, users can now automatically generate notes, summaries, and AI-powered discussions from both video and audio sources. By linking key concepts directly to video transcripts, NotebookLM aims to help users access relevant information without the need to watch entire videos.

For audio files, such as lectures and podcasts, the tool also generates detailed study guides that could make it easier to navigate and review key points.

This expansion builds on NotebookLM’s previous capabilities, which supported formats such as PDFs, Google Docs, web URLs, and Google Slides and is powered by the Gemini 1.5 Pro model.

Google’s NotebookLM Gets Gemini 1.5 Pro to Enhance its Capabilities
Google’s NotebookLM can now accept Google Slides and web URLs as sources from users in addition to Google Docs, PDFs, and text files.
TechloyHenry Chikwem

With the new update, NotebookLM users globally can simply upload a YouTube link or an audio file, and the AI-powered tool will generate structured notes linked to the corresponding transcript. Additionally, NotebookLM’s built-in YouTube player enables users to watch videos and take notes simultaneously, promising a seamless research experience.

Google also expanded the Audio Overview feature, which it launched earlier this month to help users create AI-hosted, podcast-like discussions based on their uploaded content. Now, Audio Overview will enable faster sharing of these AI-hosted discussions through sharable URLs, though this feature remains unavailable to Workspace users.

Google’s NotebookLM will now let you turn notes into AI-generated audio
The app now supports Google Slides and web URLs in addition to traditional formats like Google Docs, PDFs, and text files.
TechloyKelechi Edeh

While still experimental, these features represent an important step toward Google’s broader goal of making research more interactive and productive through AI.

By addressing a key gap in how users manage large volumes of information, NotebookLM is shaping up to be an indispensable tool for students, researchers, and professionals alike.