NotebookLM Plus is now available to Google Workspace customers

A new premium version of Google’s NotebookLM AI assistant is now available to Google Workspace customers.

Google unveiled NotebookLM last year, initially under the name Project Tailwind, and began testing the AI-powered “notebook” with select users. NotebookLM lets users upload multiple documents and other sources — Google Docs, PDFs, audio files and web URLs, for instance — that are analyzed by Google language models. Users can then query via a generative AI (genAI) chatbot interface. 

Google has added several features since NotebookLM was first unveiled, including  Audio Overviews, which generates a podcast-style audio discussion from the contents of uploaded documents. 

A free version of the app has been available to Google Workspace customers since September, and an early access pilot for an “enhanced” business version of NotebookLM was announced in October. 

Google also announced the launch of its new NotebookLM Plus. This is available to Google Workspace users that pay for the Gemini for Workspace add-on (which starts at $20 per user each month on top of Workspace subscriptions), as well as a standalone version via Google Cloud. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for pricing for the standalone version of the app. 

The premium version removes some of the usage limitations with the free version. That means five times more Audio Overviews, queries, notebooks, and sources per notebook. There are also customization options for style and tone of user notebooks, and shared notebooks for teams with usage analytics.

Google highlighted “enterprise-grade” protections for business customers: employee uploads and queries entered into NotebookLM Plus won’t be used to train models and are not reviewed by humans, Google said.

“Your data remains your data and any files uploaded, queries and responses are not shared outside your organization’s trust boundary,” a Google spokesperson said in a blog post. 

NotebookLM users get access to a redesigned the user interface, too. 

“From the start, we wanted NotebookLM to be a tool that would let you move effortlessly from asking questions to reading your sources to capturing your own ideas,”  Steven Johnson, editorial director forGoogle Labs, said in a blog post. “Today, we’re rolling out a new design that makes it easier than ever to switch between those different activities in a single, unified interface.” 

The interface is organized into three components: a “sources” panel that manages information related to a user’s project; a “chat” panel, where you can query the NotebookLM chatbot about the contents of uploaded documents; and the “studio” panel, where new documents such as study guides, briefing docs and audio overviews, can be created with one click,Google said. Each component can be expanded and resized to help focus on a particular part of the app. 

There’s also a new feature under development: the ability for a user to interrupt an AI-generated Audio Overview conversation mid-flow and ask questions. “Using your voice, you can ask the hosts for more details or to explain a concept differently,” said Johnson. It’s like having a personal tutor or guide who listens attentively, and then responds directly, drawing from the knowledge in your sources.”

Google noted that NotebookLM will be embedded in Agentspace, a new tool for interacting with AI agents for work tasks.