Quick insights for a smarter digital life

By Mrs Hudson-Findley (Director of Digital Learning, Enterprise and Sustainability)

Our regular feature explores the tools, trends and ideas shaping how we live, learn and work in the digital age - from AI and screen time to sustainability and beyond.

Imagine an AI that doesn’t scour the internet for answers but works only with your materials - reports, notes, articles, or PDFs. That’s NotebookLM, Google’s free (for now) research assistant. Unlike ChatGPT or Copilot, it doesn’t draw from its own training data; it analyses the sources you upload and helps you understand them better.

Unlike general chatbots such as ChatGPT or Copilot, NotebookLM is source-grounded: it only answers questions based on the files you upload. You can add up to fifty sources, think policy documents, lesson notes or articles and it will summarise them, highlight themes, and answer questions with clear citations linking straight back to your text.

It’s surprisingly versatile. You can ask it to create concise briefings from multiple reports, generate study guides from notes, or even produce “Audio Overviews” - short podcast-style summaries you can listen to on the move. Its new “Studio” mode even turns documents into explainer videos or visual summaries.

For education, enterprise or home projects, NotebookLM offers a glimpse of the future: an AI that doesn’t just fetch knowledge but helps you understand your own.