News
In Brief
- Expanded language support. Video Overviews now available in over 80 languages.
- Improved audio depth. Audio Overviews offer more comprehensive, full-length content globally.
- Broader user access. Students, researchers and enterprise users worldwide gain richer content insights, regardless of language.
Google made two upgrades to its AI-powered research platform, NotebookLM, on Aug. 25. Video Overviews are now available in more than 80 languages worldwide, extending beyond their English-only release in late July.
The company also upgraded Audio Overviews, making non-English summaries match the depth and structure of the English versions. Both updates are live immediately and will roll out globally this week, according to the company.
NotebookLM's Growing Functionality
The launch is just the latest addition to the platform's growing functionality, which has picked up steam in the last year. The announcement was accompanied unsurprisingly by an AI-generated video overview.
Google introduced NotebookLM in 2023 as a research platform to help students, researchers and knowledge workers synthesize documents. At the time of its release, the platform stood out from equivalent AI chat interfaces with its promise to not use any source materials in training and its grounding in user-provided source material.
By limiting responses to source material only, NotebookLM avoided many of the hallucinations that still plague some of the biggest chat interfaces that base responses on any available material on the web.
Initially focused on text-based summaries, the product expanded in September 2024 with Audio Overview, podcast-like deep dives between two AI-generated hosts discussing any given notebook's sources. Competitors took note, with copycat products introduced (including one by former NotebookLM staffers). Microsoft launched its equivalent, Copilot Notebooks, in July 2025. Copilot Notebooks transported some of the basic key functionalities of NotebookLM — document analysis and synthesis of a contained number of documents, audio overviews — and embeds it within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
While it warns that hallucinations can still occur, the direct link to sources within responses simplifies the fact checking needed with any AI-generated content.
NotebookLM for Team Use
The product started as a tool for individual exploration, but the introduction of NotebookLM Enterprise (and to a certain extent, NotebookLM Plus) expanded the potential of the tool for team-based applications.
First the nitty gritty: The Enterprise model increased usage limits to 500 notebooks per individual, 300 sources per notebook and 20 audio overviews — a marked bump up from the personal version's 100 notebooks, 50 sources and 50 queries. It also includes all of the enterprise-grade security measures you'd expect, including data residency choices, encryption of content at rest, identity and access management controls, support for Google Identity and automatic data deletion.
But the real selling point of the Enterprise version for end users is the ability to create and share notebooks for broader use. The Enterprise edition allows for three different roles, which can be applied at the notebook level:
- NotebookLM Owner
- NotebookLM Editor
- NotebookLM Viewer
In an interview earlier this year, Google Labs Director of Product Kelly Schaefer suggested teams could use these shared notebooks to compile competitive intelligence for a new product in advance of a big meeting. Or a sales team could pool previous pitches, data and notes about a customer to bring fellow teammates up to speed quickly. Or an HR team could collaborate on a notebook for new hires to answer frequently asked questions during onboarding.
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Google has used the platform internally to improve User Experience research, uploading numerous interview transcripts to identify key themes, patterns and representative quotes, according to NotebookLM editorial director Steve Johnson. This internal validation demonstrates the platform's effectiveness for qualitative analysis across enterprise functions, from market research to customer insights.
With the expansion of language access this week, global enterprises can create stakeholder update presentations, training videos and audio overviews of executive briefings in employees' native languages.
A Timeline of NotebookLM's Evolution
| Timing | Description |
|---|---|
| July 2023 | NotebookLM debuts in early access. |
| December 2023 | NotebookLM made available for U.S. users aged 18+ to support research within Google Docs, PDFs and text formats. Runs on Gemini Pro. |
| June 2024 | Expansion to over 200 countries and territories. Introduction of multi-modal support for analysis of images, charts and diagrams. New supported sources include Google Slides and web links. Direct links to sources introduced. New format generation including FAQs, Briefing Docs, Study Guides. Runs on Gemini 1.5 Pro. |
| September 2024 | Introduction of audio overviews, podcast-like deep dives into a notebook's sources. |
| October 2024 | Business-grade features introduced. Users gain more control of audio overviews. Introduction of NotebookLM Business pilot via Google Workspace. |
| December 2024 | New UI introduced with three panels: sources, chat, studio. First subscription model for power users and business enterprises, NotebookLM Plus, made available. Gemini 2.0 Flash experimental rollout. |
| March 2025 | Mind map visualization introduced. |
| April 2025 | Audio overview support for over 50 languages rolled out. Ability to pull sources in directly from the web. |
| May 2025 | Launch of mobile app. |
| June 2025 | Collaborative abilities enhanced with public notebook sharing and multi-user interactions. |
| July 2025 | Featured notebooks released through partnerships with academics, experts and authors. Video overviews introduced. |
| August 2025 | Video overviews available in over 80 languages. Feature parity to bring the global experience closer to the English version. |
The rapid evolution from research tool to enterprise platform demonstrates Google's commitment to meeting diverse individual and organizational needs while maintaining the core promise of source-grounded, hallucination-resistant AI assistance.
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