Notebook LM is Google’s Note-taking and Reseach Assistant tool based on the Gemini 2.0 platform (as of the time of writing, pi-day (March 14th) 2025).
DTU have no licenses to the tool and have not evaluated it’s risk and potential applicability.
Some other services, like ChatGPT, Copilot or Le Chat are general tools that have been trained on vast amounts of data, and therefore embed a lot of general knowledge, although they may additionally be able to search for, and include, more recent information from “the internet” in the replies.
In contrast hereto, Notebook LM works primarily with your own knowledge bank, such as papers which you initially upload in e.g. PDF format, links to websites, youtube videos, etc.
You can then use the tool to build an overview, make your own research notes, simplify complex explanations, ask question to your knowlege base or e.g. create a FAQ and then share it all with your peers (sharing currently requires a subscription). You can even ask it to create an audio podcast that explains selected topics, and perhaps listen to that as you’re in the train!
It is currently available in a free tier as well as in a plus version on subscription basis.
Note that your data is transferred to, and stored with, Google when you use the service.
One alternative to Notebook LM could be setting up a local LLM application/model with your own knowledge database, although these solutions don’t currently offer the same functionality.
Another alternative is to use some of the dedicated research tools officially available to DTU, like scite.ai or silvi.ai, which the DTU Library have negotiated licenses for.