On July 30 Google announced that the Asia-Pacific region recorded the highest level of interaction with NotebookLM, with India leading the global usage rate followed by the U.S. and Japan.
"We are also seeing strong growth in South Korea and Vietnam. They both rank among the top 10 countries worldwide for NotebookLM usage."
Unlike more popular platforms such as ChatGPT or Gemini, NotebookLM is designed to help users organize information. It supports various types of data including PDFs, web pages, YouTube videos, audio files, Google Docs, and Slides. NotebookLM also allows users to interact with the content through text, charts, images, audio, and multiple languages.
Users can directly chat with their "notebook" to receive answers with citations, and generate summaries, study guides, transcripts, and mind maps.
Users can also make their notebooks public. Google said the most popular public notebooks come from the Asia-Pacific region, featuring a wide range of topics from local government policies and tax regulations to teaching awards and detailed resources for news reporters.
A document created by a Vietnamese user has in fact become one of the most widely accessed public notebooks.
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Google's AI-powered tool, NotebookLM. Photo by courtesy of Google |
Google recently introduced new features to personalize information and boost engagement. One of them, Video Overviews, uses AI to generate visual representations of documents based on user-provided images, diagrams, citations, and data.
According to the company, users can determine specific focus areas and learning goals, ask broad questions such as "I have no knowledge of this topic, help me understand the diagrams," or input more advanced prompts such as "I’m an expert in X and my team is working on Y; focus on Z."
Google plans to launch Featured Notebooks through collaborations with authors, researchers, publishers, and reputable nonprofit organizations worldwide. These curated collections will allow users to access in-depth information and expert advice.