NotebookLM, Google’s AI-powered note-taking app, can summarize and help you dig deeper into YouTube videos. The new feature works by analyzing text in YouTube video content, including automatically generated content.
When you add a YouTube link to NotebookLM, it uses artificial intelligence to provide a summary of the main topics covered in the article. You can click on these topics to get more information and ask questions. (If you’re having trouble finding something to ask, NotebookLM will show you some questions.)
When I joined The Verge’s iPhone 16 Pro review, NotebookLM created the following topics: discussed in this video, such as “Apple Intelligence,” “iPhone 16 Pro Camera” and “Image Processing” in the chat window.
After clicking on some of the topics, I found that NotebookLM backs up the information provided in its chat window with a citation that links you directly to the point in the transcript where it’s mentioned. You can also create an Audio Overview based on the content, which is a podcast-style discussion hosted by AI.
I found that the feature worked on most of the videos I tried, except for ones published within the past two days or so.
While Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot can both summarize YouTube videos with transcripts, NotebookLM gives you some jumping-off points you can use to learn more about a topic. In addition to adding support for YouTube videos, Google announced that NotebookLM now supports audio recordings as well, allowing you to search transcribed conversations for certain information and create study guides.
