NotebookLM Explained in 15 Minutes (+ Best New Features in 2026)

I was getting my doctorate. A professor

said if you cannot explain it simply, you don't know it well enough. So, this

is the whole point of these videos. AI,

it can sound really complicated, but my goal is in less than 10 minutes go over a tool and help you be able to use it.

I'm Liz Moyer, Doctor of Strategic Leadership. And as an Air Force officer,

Leadership. And as an Air Force officer, I've deployed around the world, worked at the Pentagon, and definitely used a lot of AI. About a year ago, I talked about Notebook LN and I want to go over

some awesome updates. So, let's jump in.

All right, new features, my favorite.

Here's a quick overview of what we'll discuss. This is if you're new to

discuss. This is if you're new to Notebook LM, what it is, talk about some potential examples of when you would use it. Discuss those new features, and

it. Discuss those new features, and always go back to how do I make sure I can trust and verify this information and use it safely.

Notebook LM simply explain. Well, I

think about this is an AI that works directly from your sources. If you go on to Chat GBT, yes, you can upload a source and it will

answer questions, but it also will pull from two other locations, which is the internet and then data it's been trained on.

What I love about this is if you really want to deep dive a document or multiple documents, you're actually going to have a tool that will not look at other

references. They'll only look at what

references. They'll only look at what you have. Diving into the features that

you have. Diving into the features that got better, I will actually open up the platform. I'm going to show you the free

platform. I'm going to show you the free version. Of course, you do get more

version. Of course, you do get more capability and capacity when you pay the advanced one and that is really with any type of AI tool. So, I have logged into

Notebook LM and just it's kind of cool when you think about it. It is these digital notebooks um that you create and you upload different resources into it.

Now, I will click on create a new notebook.

And ultimately, there are a lot of different ways that you can upload files. If you've got something on your

files. If you've got something on your computer, you can go ahead and drop that in there. And you see the different

in there. And you see the different types. You've got PDF, docs, you've got

types. You've got PDF, docs, you've got websites, things from your drive.

So, as I'm going through these new features, what I will do is give you an example of how you can use these new features. Notebook, of course, you can

features. Notebook, of course, you can put up to 50 documents in or sources in there. But what if you just want to

there. But what if you just want to start with one? You're saying, "Hey, I'm going to go simple."

And think about, you sit there and you want to have better meetings. Maybe this

is better meetings at work, better meetings at home, trying to manage all of the chaos. Well, you would click on a website and I actually in my free AI

course which is located on my YouTube channel at Dr. Liz Moyer, there's a whole playlist for that. There's one

that I talk about meetings and I will insert that in there and within a couple of seconds to be honest, it has read the

transcript and has an understanding of this source. So new resources are going

this source. So new resources are going to be on the right hand side. If you see beta that means it's new. Um and one is

that it will generate slides based on the content. In this case the YouTube

the content. In this case the YouTube video that I uploaded which talked about meanings has slides but it's kind of cool to see a different take on it. So

I'm going to go ahead and click on that.

And when I click on it it'll say do you want a detailed deck or do you want presenter slides? pretty neat. And you

presenter slides? pretty neat. And you

can see how this might apply to you've written a paper and now you want to present it um like a talking paper to your boss about, hey, how could we run meetings better?

And now here you go. You've got this AI partner that's helping you.

You see just the different options. And

I'm just going to leave it. I like that it's a detailed deck. It's an English default length. And then um I've got

default length. And then um I've got this prompt that's already in there.

We'll press generate and let that go from there.

Now, another cool new beta is infographic.

And we say that a picture can say a thousand words. So in this case, if

thousand words. So in this case, if you're trying to sit there and go in one picture, what does this video represent?

This is where you can use this tool.

Now, your options, you've got landscape, portrait, these different types of visual styles. Pretty fun to move around

visual styles. Pretty fun to move around with, and then level of detail along with any other details you want to give your AI partner.

I would like the concept of instructional. I'm going to go concise.

instructional. I'm going to go concise.

We're going to do portrait. And say, you know let's make this a military theme. and then

generate. So these features really are taking the context whatever you put in there and digesting it and saying how can we visually display this and that is

something that AI has made a lot of progress on in the past year. It used to be if you wanted to generate an image the person would have maybe six fingers

and all these weird isms of it. It's not

perfect but we're moving in the right direction. Next, and this was not in the

direction. Next, and this was not in the first video that I created, is the mind map. And so, we'll click on that. And

map. And so, we'll click on that. And

what I really enjoy about a mind map is something to understand how things sort of lay out and how they are related. If

you haven't worked with a mind map, I'll show you real quickly what that looks like. You have that main idea on the

like. You have that main idea on the lefth hand side which is hey you need to have a toolkit for running meetings and AI can help you and then what you see is

that in this video that I produced I go over these different topics of meeting fundamentals. Do you want to go further

fundamentals. Do you want to go further into well what did she say about meeting fundamentals? I click on it and then it

fundamentals? I click on it and then it will display well she said this is when you should meet when to skip hybrid mixed

approaches and you can on down the mind map and it might spur an idea and go yeah you know I've been thinking about

how to have better meetings and really specifically I want to dig a little bit deeper into how you could do recordings and that might stem your research in the

future and how you would move forward.

Now, the audio overview has also had some major upgrades. I'll click on that and you can see the customization has increased significantly.

Do you want a deep dive, a brief, a critique, a debate? Same thing with the length and the focus of this. So, you

sit there and you go, "Okay, well, yeah, Liz has said this is how I think meeting should run and how you can use AI,

but I'd like a critique of it." Well,

now you can click on here. You can say, um, I want it to be short. I just want to pick one. and let me put in if I

agree with the what it should focus. I

can just press tab and it will then put in that information. But I could also say, you know, I am a busy stay at home

mom and I want to know how this would apply to me. Then I will press generate and

to me. Then I will press generate and just say like I love southern jokes.

and analogies adds a little bit more context and maybe helps you remember something a little bit better. And it

might seem odd. Wait, you know, Liz, you're sharing a YouTube channel like video. Why would you do this with Open?

video. Why would you do this with Open?

It's just an example. You could do this with a recipe. You could do it with a lot of documents. Let's say you've just started a new job and they've given you

10 policies. Well, let's throw that in

10 policies. Well, let's throw that in there and have an understanding about what are all the policies that I need to be following if I'm in a really

regulated position. On the flip side,

regulated position. On the flip side, you might have a new team and you want to provide guidance to your team. So,

you look at all the documents that you've given. You can throw those

you've given. You can throw those documents in there. As I mentioned before, up to 50 documents and then ask questions and say, you know, what's missing here? I'm able to at this

missing here? I'm able to at this bottom, this is not a new feature, but I do want to point out something going back to the concept of why notebook LM is a little bit different is that it's

not going to look for outside resources.

So, if I say what do other experts say about how to do meetings, it's going to answer, but it's only

going to look at what I have said in the video. And so I've referenced the win

video. And so I've referenced the win framework which is Michael Hyatt. I've

referenced the 7-minute drill which is the military.

However, it didn't go out and say, you know, there is another organization that does X on how to do meetings. That's

only going to go into what I've given it. And if I click on it, these

it. And if I click on it, these citations will come up and say this is where I'm mentioning it. So the last new update to notebook LM is the deep

research on the lefth hand side.

There is fast research and there's also deep research. So I can click on here

deep research. So I can click on here and say now I want to reach out. Now I

want to see if there's other resources out there on meetings. So what other resources are out there on meetings?

And then you can see I can click on the web. I can look in my drive. So maybe

web. I can look in my drive. So maybe

I've got a database I want to have it pull from, but in this case I'll do the web and we will let that spin and go from there.

Now a little bit of show and tell.

Remember I talked about the beta infographic that took a while to generate, but you can see here's the results. And it's taken essentially what

results. And it's taken essentially what I talk about in my video and made it into an infographic is hey what's the objective?

Use your program, whether you want to use the win framework or the seven-minute drill to run your meeting.

Make sure you use AI. Make sure everyone knows the role in the meeting and then do a debrief. So, if you don't have time to watch this YouTube video, you could hang this up and go, "Okay, this is what

I need to do for meetings." Or maybe you watched it and you want a quick reminder. This infographic can be very

reminder. This infographic can be very helpful. We also talked about the beta

helpful. We also talked about the beta slide deck. So, here is what it

slide deck. So, here is what it generated. This is actually kind of fun

generated. This is actually kind of fun for me because whenever I do slides, I have been using the AI tool called Gamma. But as Notebook LM has improved,

Gamma. But as Notebook LM has improved, it's kind of cool to see, okay, let me compare and see what did my gamma slide

say for overload and why meetings can be very difficult and then what did not LM say? And I kind of like enjoy it. It's

say? And I kind of like enjoy it. It's

it's sort of fun to see the difference, see the flowcharts, and just sort of see what are different ways that people digest information. So, a quick trust

digest information. So, a quick trust check, and I mentioned this earlier, is how much can you really look at Notebook LM and say, is this information true?

Well, you never ever ever want to use AI and take the output without reviewing it before you send it to someone else and use it. That's just rule number one.

use it. That's just rule number one.

It's always going to be an intern.

Number two is check the citations. I

have never seen it hallucinate, but it doesn't mean it cannot do so. And so,

you want to do that spot check. And

number three is just kind of do the sanity test. You can look at it or have

sanity test. You can look at it or have someone else and say, does that actually make sense? Now, my favorite tool by far

make sense? Now, my favorite tool by far with Notebook LM, although a lot of the resources on here are great, is the

podcast. And I'll just play just a

podcast. And I'll just play just a minute of it for you for you to see kind of what it does. Okay, so you can see that it took in the context of saying I'm a stay-at-home mom. And it is

already mentioned this is going to be a critique. What I enjoy about this, I can

critique. What I enjoy about this, I can click on the three dots. I can download this and now when I'm walking, I'm driving or doing dishes, laundry, things

like that, I can listen to it offline, which is really cool. And I would say, yeah, probably wouldn't use this for a YouTube video, but something like a

document or, you know, when a boss says, "Hey, this is something that I want you to review." You can put that in there

to review." You can put that in there and listen to it. And I'm not saying you don't have to still read the document, but you have a much better frame of reference moving forward. So bottom

line, any type of AI tool is always going to change and evolve. Typically

every like 3 months, I'll actually ask it, hey, what's changed? What's what's

happened? And then go around and look and see all those updates. So subscribe

and check out the updates that I have on other AI tools that can help save time.

Additionally, if you are looking to save time at work, I have a free AI course where you're able to reclaim up to 15% of your work week just using some simple

tricks with a free AI tool. That can be any type of generative AI like Claude, Judge PT, or Gemini.

Until next