Google renames AI-powered notes app to NotebookLM

The tech giant first previewed 'Project Tailwind' in May at the annual developer conference.

San Francisco: Google has announced that it is starting to roll out the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered notes app ‘Project Tailwind’ with a new name ‘NotebookLM’, an experimental offering from Google Labs.

The tech giant first previewed ‘Project Tailwind’ in May at the annual developer conference.

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“It’s our endeavour to reimagine what notetaking software might look like if you designed it from scratch knowing that you would have a powerful language model at its core: hence the LM,” the company said in a blogpost on Wednesday.

“It will be immediately available to a small group of users in the US as we continue to refine the product and make it more helpful.”

The tech giant noted that due to the rapid growth of information, one of the biggest challenges is synthesising facts and ideas from multiple sources.

NotebookLM is an experimental product designed to use the power and promise of language models paired with the existing content to gain critical insights, faster.

“Think of it as a virtual research assistant that can summarise facts, explain complex ideas and brainstorm new connections,” the company said.

A key difference between NotebookLM and traditional AI chatbots is that this app allows users to “ground” the language model in their notes and sources.

“Source-grounding effectively creates a personalised AI that’s versed in the information relevant to you,” Google explained.

Also, users will be able to ground NotebookLM in specific Google Docs that they choose.

In Google Docs, users will be able to do three things — Get a summary, ask questions and generate ideas.

“While NotebookLM’s source-grounding does seem to reduce the risk of model ‘hallucinations,’ it’s always important to fact-check the AI’s responses against your original source material,” Google said.