You may have come across debates on social media platforms and forums about whether Google’s NotebookLM is as useful as people think. While it may continue forever, no one can deny that the AI tool is a productivity booster, as it saves time creating and organizing notes and documents. What also draws users’ attention to it is that Google is making significant changes to the platform at a rapid pace.
A few days ago, we reported that Google is working on a couple of new features to help users quickly find the notebooks they are looking for. While these are still in development, we recently learned about another upcoming NotebookLM feature. This time around, the goal is to help users better understand what a notebook is about.
NotebookLM will give you more context about your notebooks
As things stand right now, when you create a notebook, NotebookLM automatically generates a title based on the content of the sources if you don’t create one manually. The title is currently the only way to learn about what the notebook is about before opening it. However, this isn’t the smartest way to do it, especially when you have multiple notebooks on similar topics.
As spotted by leaker TestingCatalog, Google is working on a new feature that will finally address this issue. It is being developed to both autogenerate and allow users to manually type the summary of the notebook. If you don’t set a custom summary, NotebookLM will automatically generate a custom summary of the notebook, which will refresh every time you open the notebook.
If you are not happy with the AI-generated short description of what the notebook is about, there will be an option to override it by typing how you want to describe the notebook. While the title is useful in learning about what the notebook is about, the summary will give users additional context. So, if you have multiple notebooks on similar topics, the summary can help distinguish them, giving you a clearer idea about what’s inside each one.
In addition to this feature, two more customization options are in the works for NotebookLM users. According to TestingCatalog, Google is also testing the ability to set an avatar and the name of the creator. You’ll see the avatar on the notebook cover and the notebook title on the homepage, while the creator’s name will appear next to the avatar.
No word on when they might arrive on NotebookLM, but since they have leaked, it’s safe to assume that Google is close to readying them for release. So, maybe you won’t have to wait months to use these new features. In the meantime, you can learn about unique ways to use NotebookLM.
