Google Gemini Notebook now lets users ask questions about bought books

In short: Google’s Gemini Notebook note-taking app can now use the books you have bought on Google Play Books, so you can ask questions and create new notes and materials based on them.

What happened

Google added a feature called Expert Intelligence to Gemini Notebook, its AI note-taking app. It lets you bring books you purchased in Google Play Books into a Notebook. Once a book is added, you can ask questions about what it says, and Gemini will respond using the book as a source.

Google says the tool can also create things based on the book’s contents, like plans, infographics (simple visual summaries), and even an AI podcast (a computer-generated audio conversation). In a demo shared with The Verge, Google showed it generating a recipe book using information from Michael Pollan’s Food Rules. Google also showed it answering a workplace question using ideas from Kim Scott’s Radical Candor.

At launch, more than 100,000 books will support the feature, including titles from publishers such as Penguin Random House, Johns Hopkins University Press, Macmillan, and O’Reilly Media. Google also worked with 15 authors to make “Featured Notebooks,” which come with extra materials like an intro letter and added sources. Books that support the feature will show “Gemini Notebook” under a “Tools” label in Google Play Books.

Google also added limits to stop people from seeing books they did not buy. If you share a Notebook with a purchased book, someone who does not own it can see the title listed, but cannot read the full text or use its information, and they will be sent to Google Play Books to buy it.

Why it matters

For readers, this could make it easier to turn a pile of books into something usable, like study notes or a plan, without flipping through pages. For authors and publishers, Google says it is trying to do this in a way that still encourages sales, similar to a library catalog that shows what exists but does not hand out the whole book.

Source: The Verge AI