In October, Google began piloting a version of NotebookLM, an artificial intelligence note-taking and research application for enterprises. Now, the company is bringing NotebookLM to the enterprise with work-focused security and privacy features.
The enterprise version of NotebookLM (which Google calls NotebookLMPlus) offers the same experience as the consumer version, but with added controls over access and data management. Employees can upload data and files, create notebooks, podcast-style audio summaries (called audio overviews), and more, and search and share these items among members of the organization.
Other benefits include: five times the number of podcast-style audio summaries, notebooks, and data sources per notebook; the ability to customize the style and tone of AI-generated notebook responses; and usage analytics for shared team notebooks.
NotebookLM for enterprises is part of Agentspace, Google Cloud's new platform for artificial intelligence-driven "agents." It will launch in early access today.
"Millions of users use NotebookLM to understand complex information," Raj Pai, vice president of artificial intelligence at Google Cloud, said in a press release. "Through our integration with Agentspace, we bring these popular capabilities to customers, meeting their compliance, security and privacy requirements - and we're connecting them to enterprise data and applications."
In Agentspace, NotebookLM coexists with agents that can analyze documents and emails, translate files, and bring in data from third-party repositories. Google says users will be able to launch and search for agents from a single interface, and will soon be able to create custom agents using low-code tools.
NotebookLMPlus is also available in Google Workspace (Gemini for Workspace program) for business, school, university and corporate NotebookLM users who do not want to sign up for Agentspace. In addition, org users can also purchase NotebookLMPlus separately through Google Cloud.
Starting early next year, NotebookLMPlus will also be available to individual users who subscribe to the $20 per month Google One AI Premium plan.
NotebookLM is one of Google's most popular recent artificial intelligence products. A few months after its release, NotebookLM became "it" on social media for its audio generation feature, which creates realistic-sounding front-and-back conversations between two synthesized podcast hosts based on source video or audio files, URLs, or documents.
Last Friday, NotebookLM received a redesign that reorganized the app's tools across three panels: a "Sources" panel for managing imported information, a "Chat" panel for discussing information through a conversational interface, and a "Studio" panel that lets users create content like study guides, presentation documents, and podcast audio with a single click.
Elsewhere in NotebookLM, an experimental new feature lets users "join" a podcast-like audio conversation to ask the synthesized host for more details or to expand on a concept. The specific operations are as follows:
The user creates a new audio overview.
They click the "Interactive Mode (Beta)" button.
While listening, they click "Join." The host will call them.
User asks. Moderators will give personalized answers based on their data sources.
After answering, the moderator will continue their dialogue.
Google notes that the feature is currently only available in English, doesn't work with existing audio overviews, and that moderators may pause awkwardly before answering, or have "occasional inaccuracies."
Of course, podcast-like or not, users should always fact-check answers given by AI tools.