Google"s Gemini can do a lot, such as powering live translation, helping with your emails, and even letting you easily switch away from ChatGPT and other chatbots. However, one thing that was quite a pain was managing conversations and grouping them together.
The search giant has finally solved the problem by adding "Notebooks" support in Gemini to have a dedicated space to organize your chats and files, which also sync with NotebookLM. With this, Google has leveled with ChatGPT"s similar feature called Projects. Meanwhile, Gemini and NotebookLM already work together in some capacity because you can add NotebookLM as a source in Gemini.
Google is rolling out notebooks to Google AI Ultra/Pro/Plus subscribers on the web. The feature will expand to mobile and more countries across Europe, and to free users, in the coming weeks. Google notes that notebooks aren"t available to users under 18, nor to Workspace and Education accounts.
However, Google has bigger plans for the notebooks and said that you should "think of notebooks as personal knowledge bases shared across Google products, starting in Gemini." The company added that it"s working to add more notebook features to Gemini in the future.
If you have a Google AI subscription, you can try out notebooks in Gemini by clicking on the "New notebook" option on the side panel. You can move your previous chats to a notebook, add files like documents and PDFs, and give custom instructions specific to that notebook.
Notebooks bring continuity between Gemini and NotebookLM. For instance, a source you add in Gemini will automatically appear in NotebookLM and vice versa. Even if you started a notebook in Gemini, you can use the sources with features in NotebookLM, such as Cinematic Video Overviews and Infographics.
"For example, if you’re a student, try adding class notes to a notebook and using NotebookLM to create a Cinematic Video Overview. The next day, open the Gemini app and ask it to draft an essay outline on that exact material," Google said in a blog post announcing the feature.
Notebooks let you store related chats in one place, but a bigger benefit is that they ground AI responses in your own resources while drawing on the web when required. To recall, Notebooks have been a core feature of NotebookLM since its inception.