Google NotebookLM Audio Overviews now lets you call in a question

About Google made a big splash with its AI-powered podcast feature and before the end of the year the app is . As part of a major overhaul of Google’s AI toolkit, Audio Overviews is now interactive.

After creating an Audio Overview based on where you uploaded it, Google says you’ll be able to play it in a new “Interactive mode (BETA).” Clicking “Enter” at any time in the new game will cause the AI ​​to call you and ask you a question, which they can answer while you’re listening. Google cautions that the feature is still experimental and that hosts may have difficulty stopping or introducing new errors when answering questions, but it appears to be working well in a short-term test. I was able to create a NotebookLM project trained on the NotebookLM documentation, and while asking a question seemed to slow down the whole show, the AI ​​moderators were able to integrate the answer into the whole show.

Along with these new additions, NotebookLM is getting a visual overhaul. The interface is now divided into three sections, the “Studio” group where AI products such as Audio Overviews, study guides, and FAQs reside, the central “Chat” group for asking questions about where you came from Google’s AI, and “Sources.” panel on the left side of the monitor where NotebookLM comes in. It’s a clean setup, and being able to collapse the panel when you’re not using it keeps things clutter-free.

Google is also using this update as a way to introduce its first license to monetize NotebookLM. New premium subscriptions are available to Google Workspace and Cloud customers as a Gemini add-on, and allow you to create up to 20 audio visuals per day, create up to 500 AI notes, and add 300 originals to each notebook. This translates to an additional $20 per user per month for Workspace subscribers. Starting next year, the benefits of NotebookLM Plus will also be extended to Google One AI Premium.

NotebookLM started out as an internal Google experiment called Project Tailwind, but it quickly grew into one of the most intuitive features of Google’s Gemini AI model thanks to its focus on the sources you download, rather than the internet and whatever Gemini was taught. It can work with everything from web content to but his Audio Overviews have proven to be one of his most popular products.