- Google upgraded NotebookLM to a million-token pop-up, allowing AI to scan entire books or massive project archives in a single conversation.
- The update also increases NotebookLM’s memory sixfold, laying the groundwork for new memory features such as a saved chat history.
- NotebookLM’s improved flexibility means it can take on all kinds of personas and uses the new ‘Objectives’ system, which allows users to define the role of the AI.
NotebookLM is no longer just for footnotes. Google’s ambitious search assistant has just moved beyond its academic roots and toward more comprehensive conversational collaboration.
Google announced a broad set of upgrades designed to improve NotebookLM’s ability to mimic human understanding of circumstances and appropriate interactions.
The upgrades are made possible by a massive expansion of NotebookLM’s pop-up window, essentially its short-term memory. NotebookLM now supports Gemini’s full million token pop-up across the board.
This increases what was previously available eightfold, meaning the AI can now hold entire books, transcripts of long meetings, and sprawling project files in its virtual mind for immediate memorization and analysis. This is a big step forward for users who juggle large collections of documents and want more than superficial answers.
You no longer have to copy and paste fragments of a PDF into a chat box. You can upload the whole thing, along with any supporting documents, emails, or notes you want to add, and NotebookLM will not only read it all, but reference it during long, coherent conversations. It’s the difference between talking to a helpful stranger and working with someone who’s been in the project trenches with you since day one.
Improved answers
And the gain is very real, according to Google. The company says internal testing shows a 50% improvement in user satisfaction for longer, multi-source responses, thanks to this increase in attention span.
Memory improvement also applies to conversations with users. Where you may have noticed NotebookLM losing its train of thought after sending just a few messages, it can now follow context six times further into a dialogue.
Your chat history will also be preserved, for lack of a better term, in the spirit of NotebookLM. This means you can start a session on Tuesday, close your laptop, and return to the same train of thought on Friday afternoon without retracing your steps. This memory also remains private. Shared notebooks don’t share discussions unless you want them to.
Google Goals
What ties all of these upgrades together is the addition of “Goals,” essentially a way to define how the AI assistant approaches and interacts with you. You can request a virtual doctoral dissertation advisor who pokes holes in your logic, or a sounding board for a new scenario that answers each question with another question to encourage thinking. You can even ask him to play a guiding role through fiction, acting as a game master for tabletop role-playing games and “improvising” complex storytelling.
NotebookLM relies on using AI not to search all the time, but to provide insight into the searches you’ve already done. The platform does just that, which is useful as AI tools become more and more ubiquitous in the workplace (overtly or not).
NotebookLM’s flexibility of goals and personality makes this even more evident. You no longer adjust tone on the fly. You set the parameters for how this assistant should think. These changes push NotebookLM into the realm of platforms like Notion AI. You may also see Google opting for a custom memory-enabled agent from ChatGPT, or Perplexity’s multimodal options which can absorb multiple documents at once. But NotebookLM stands out for how it merges these features into a single interface, something Google often succeeds with.
There is also some typically Google logic at work. Integrations now cover over 1 million apps and websites. The chat interface coordinates things between these applications. So while NotebookLM can’t quite mimic the semi-independent digital agents that spring up from AI vendors, the groundwork is being laid.
The new version of NotebookLM could be the kind of tool meant to attract those who are currently wary of AI, but dread document analysis. Arguably, what most people want from AI is a tool whose function is displayed through its form, not a black box that you can’t understand. NotebookLM could fill this niche.
The upgrades make NotebookLM easily serve more people. It can offer better study guides for students, better citation management, and improved cross-referencing. NotebookLM learns how you work, remembers what you do, and meets you halfway. And that’s a much easier statement to trust than the one about “transforming the way you work.”
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