What you need to know
- The NotebookLM app on Android and iOS reportedly receives a video summary after a short wait.
- A video overview is an AI-generated slideshow packed with visuals, controls, and more, including all content provided to NotebookLM to help you learn and understand.
- Previous updates to the mobile version of NotebookLM provided flashcards and quizzes for those who wanted to study new topics.
NotebookLM has been gradually upgrading the way heavy research notes are compressed and delivered to users, and this latest update for Android adds what was missing before.
9to5Google’s post highlights and provides videos of recent updates to NotebookLM that have started rolling out for Android and iOS devices. Specifically, this update concerns the arrival of video overviews on mobile devices. Instead of listening to or reading the information collected by NotebookLM, users can have the AI generate a video based on the content they are given.
A video overview is essentially an AI-generated slideshow with playback controls, visuals, and more.
This publication also spotted an update to NotebookLM’s Slide Deck in this mobile-specific update. Google offers users ways to “choose a format” such as Detailed and Presenter. The former is reportedly designed for “self-reading” users, while the latter offers “clean slides with just the key talking points, meant to support you while you talk.”
Output languages and the ability to add custom prompts to create an “overview” or “guide your audience” were also mentioned. The update concludes with additions to the app’s infographics functionality. Currently, users can customize it similar to what is available on the PC version. These options include changing the orientation (landscape, portrait, etc.), which source to use, and more.
It’s like a digital notebook (lm)
Among the many updates that NotebookLM has received over the years, the patch that Google provided for mobile in November is likely to be useful for testing your knowledge. With Google discontinuing AI-generated flashcards and quizzes, studying takes a new look with NotebookLM. The AI uses information and details you give it that are likely to be related to the topic you’re learning. However, users can switch up the content by changing the topic, difficulty, and even size of flashcards and quizzes.
This feature was previously only available in the web version in September.
Android Central’s opinion
While Audio Overview already had a nice addition of AI-generated narration, Video Overview takes it in a different way. NotebookLM is designed to help users understand and learn about dense and heavy research topics, and we’ve seen it move in that direction. If you need to understand a fairly deep new topic, it can be much easier to watch or listen than to read a long passage.
