Google lets Gemini Notebook users analyze purchased books

Google is renaming its NotebookLM application to Gemini Notebook and introducing a feature called Expert Intelligence. This update allows users to integrate books purchased through Google Play Books directly into their digital workspace. Once imported, users can read the full text within the app, ask specific questions about the material, and generate secondary assets like study plans, infographics, or AI-generated podcasts.

At launch, the integration supports more than 100,000 titles from major publishers, including Penguin Random House, Macmillan Publishers, O’Reilly Media, and Johns Hopkins University Press. Google also collaborated with 15 prominent authors, such as Michael Pollan, Kim Scott, Steven Pinker, and Jennifer Wallace, to design customized Featured Notebooks that include supplementary source materials and introductory letters. Eligible titles in the Google Play Books store will display a Gemini Notebook option under their tools badge.

To protect intellectual property, Google built strict digital rights management into the system. If a user shares a notebook containing a purchased book, collaborators who do not own the title will only see it listed as a source. They will be blocked from viewing the full text or generating insights from it, and clicking the source will instead redirect them to purchase the book. According to Google Labs editorial director Steven Johnson, the goal is to create "new revenue possibilities for authors and publishers" while letting users build a custom advisory team.

Looking ahead, Google plans to expand the Expert Intelligence capability to include newspapers, magazines, and scholarly articles. The company also intends to roll the feature out to the Gemini app and the AI Mode in Google Search, both of which already have the ability to pull information from Gemini Notebook.