One reason to use Google's NotebookLM is that you can upload your resources and use generative AI to create a video overview. Google announced it's upgrading the experience by adding a new feature called Cinematic Video Overviews.
As the name suggests, Cinematic Video Overviews will take things "beyond narrated slides" to create immersive content. Google explained that the feature combines its generative AI models, such as Gemini 3, Nano Banana Pro, and Veo 3, to generate fluid animations and detailed visuals around the topics you want.
The feature enables Gemini to determine the best possible narrative, choose a visual style and format, and refine its work to ensure consistency. It acts as a "creative director, making hundreds of structural and stylistic decisions to best tell the story with your sources," Google said.
Cinematic Video Overviews are available in English for users aged 18 or older on the web and mobile. However, it's currently being offered to Google AI Ultra subscribers. Google has not given a timeline for when the feature will arrive for other plans and free users.
For the uninitiated, Video Overviews has been around since last year, which itself builds on the Audio Overviews. It generates animated videos in which an AI host explains information from your uploaded documents, with images, diagrams, and quotes appearing on screen. It can be used to narrate slides from source materials, and you can add a prompt to tell the AI what to focus on and to choose different visual styles.
However, using too much AI can have bad consequences. NPR "Morning Edition" host David Greene filed a lawsuit against Google over NotebookLM's AI voice that sounded like him. Several people, including a former coworker who emailed him in the fall of 2024, reportedly asked Greene whether he had licensed his voice for the new male podcast voice.
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