3 min read
Nearly two months after launching for businesses on Google Cloud and Google Workspace, Google has now made NotebookLM Plus, its premium AI-powered research assistant available to individual users. This expansion is exclusive to subscribers of the Google One AI Premium plan.
Enhanced Features and Expanded Usage Limits
Initially introduced in December as part of an experimental phase, NotebookLM Plus offers premium features with significantly increased usage limits. Individual subscribers will now have access to:
- 500 notebooks and 300 sources per notebook
- 500 daily chat queries
- 20 AI-generated audio discussions per day (five times more than the free version)
These upgraded features are now accessible for $20 per month through the Google One AI Premium plan. Additionally, students in the U.S. aged 18 and older can now subscribe at a discounted rate of $9.99 per month—a 50% reduction.
“We’ve always wanted to get NotebookLM Plus out to enterprises and consumers. We’ve seen really a ton of interest from consumers, and in particular students from the beginning,” said Kelly Schaefer, director of product and domain lead at Google Labs, in an interview.
Launched in 2023 as a side project, NotebookLM gained more traction in September of last year with the release of its Audio Overviews function. Companies such as ElevenLabs and Meta copied the service’s concept, which enables users to create audio discussions similar to podcasts using the content they contribute.
With consistent improvements, such as the ability to direct AI-generated audio conversations, Google’s service stayed relevant.
According to reports, Google is looking to expand the support for Audio Overviews in NotebookLM beyond English.
“We are thinking about how to prioritize the languages and then, most importantly, how to make sure that they feel really genuine and just as seamless and natural as our current Audio Overviews do,” she stated.
Although Schaefer didn’t say what Gemini AI models Google uses for NotebookLM, he did say that the basic model is the same for both Plus and non-premium users at the moment. She mentioned that Google Labs consistently employs the “latest and best matching Gemini models for the specific task at hand” when experimenting with multiple varieties of Gemini.
Expanding NotebookLM to Mobile Devices
Schaefer also informed us that the team is working on a separate app to deliver NotebookLM to mobile devices, but he did not provide a particular date.
“We want mobile to feel in many ways similar to the desktop experience but also really tailor it for the use cases that are most common for mobile,” Schaefer explained.
The business is also investigating how NotebookLM may benefit from the development of reasoning models and engage in activities related to thinking and reasoning.
Schaefer assured non-paying customers that they will still receive support from the team, even though NotebookLM Plus is now available to individual subscribers on the Google One AI Premium plan. This subscription grants access to Gemini Advanced, Gemini in Gmail, Docs, and 2TB of cloud storage.
“We want folks to get an excellent experience on NotebookLM, whether they’re free or paid, and it’s very important to us that the NotebookLM free experience is excellent. So, we’re thinking more about how we offer even more to the Plus users versus degrading any experience for free users,” she said.
Google has just stated that NotebookLM has increased over time without disclosing the exact user count or staff size.
According to reports, the AI assistant has had 28.18 million visits over the past three months, with nearly 9 million of those visits occurring in January alone.
