This one thing makes NotebookLM a game changer

NotebookLM is not just another chat with your documents, video or audio. Well, actually it is, but that is not what it is really about and what makes this piece of software so viral.

In a previous post I talked about Notebook LM and some of the real world applications.

In this post I want to focus on what makes this tool (and the idea itself) a real game changer for the whole AI industry.

Notebook LM shifts your perspective from creator to consumer of your own content.

What this actually means is that the ability to read and interpret whatever content you feed into Notebook LM, which is magically compiled into a podcast by two AI Hosts, will implicitly look at your content from a different angle that you may not have seen or taken seriously.

We have done this example with a service we have previously developed that can fill in form applications called Formix AI. We gave Notebook LM the content of the landing page to see how the hosts perceived the product (from a different perspective).

you can find the podcast here:

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/4229bce7-cd76-41d5-8609-689b491d016a/audio

The information we gave NotebookLM was exactly the same as the information on the website, and the developers of this tool made a lot of assumptions about which features might be important and which might not (e.g. speed, accuracy, safety, etc.)

But the NotebookM podcast hosts actually talked in a very realistic way about a feature (or lack thereof) that was not mentioned on the landing page or in the product description: the threat of what could happen if even local data was attacked. An interesting point that the authors of Formix did not really consider (or take seriously?).

What this tells us abut NotebookLM?

The ability to interpret content and create a human like Story for a podcast not only structures the the information provided, but it gives the whole content a meaning, an interpretation. and that is what makes us human: We have backgrounds, biases, personalities that have a huge impact on how we perceive information and all the actions we take, whether for business, pleasure or just for fun, are of and for human beings.

Being able to see what we create from a different perspective is invaluable.

What could be the next level?

I don't know what Google is preparing in terms of features for the product. but I can imagine that the ability for customers to customise the podcast, and especially the personalities of the hosts to match the audience they want to better understand or impress could take this idea to a whole new level.