NotebookLM Custom Instructions
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Hey Everyone,
Listen on the Go 🎧 15:54
NotebookLM, the Research Assistant from Google Labs has gotten a lot of traffic in recent weeks, and we were all wondering when Audio Overviews might get more choices and customization. Well, we didn’t have to wait long.
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Google on Thursday updated the audio summarization feature of its AI note-taking and research assistant with a custom instructions option. You can go to the Notebook guide icon, where you can now ask your AI ‘hosts’ to talk about a specific topic or tailor their discussion to a certain audience.
Google chose to improve Audio Overviews and launched a Business paid subscription related called NotebooksLM Business. The company is expected to reveal general availability and pricing details later this year.
NotebookLM went Viral in September
SimilarWeb suggests NotebookLM saw an over 371% increase in its traffic in September to 3.07 million monthly visits, up from 652,181 a month ago. Those aren’t ChatGPT like numbers, but for a Google AI product that’s still a prototype, it’s a lot. But what will Google Labs do with it?
How to use Custom Instructions
To customize the chat, open up a notebook in NotebookLM, select “Notebook guide”.
Then navigate to the “Deep dive conversation” option.
From there, hit “Customize,” and enter instructions that you want your AI hosts to follow. NotebookLM will then generate a conversation based on the directions you’ve provided.
We have written about NotebookLM here and our guide here.
NotebookLM now works in other languages.
Until now, Audio Overviews would automatically generate AI conversations from users’ sources that by default were super general and somewhat generic sounding without any ability to personalize the output besides the sources given.
Background listening: A new feature allows users to listen to the generated audio while continuing to work within the app. This means you can query your sources or explore relevant quotes without interrupting the audio playback, making it easier to multitask.
Customizing audio summaries may also help reduce hallucination to some extent according to the product people involved in the project.
NotebookLM is branded as a Personalized AI Research Assistant that can be useful for students, researchers and learning about topics.
With custom instructions for Audio overviews (the synthetic podcast): you can experiment with tone, target audience, specific topics, sources, etc.
OpenAI makes most of its revenue B2C, while Anthropic makes most of its revenue so far B2B.
AI Manifestos are having a Moment
In late September Sam Altman the CEO of OpenAI wrote this Op-ed blog. Copying him with the prefunding ritual was Anthropic’s CEO with a longer Op-ed with the stylized name “Machines of Loving Grace”. OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and others pitch investors with fairly unrealistic valuations looking for sizable funding rounds.
Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives, Anthropic has already raised $7.6 Billion mostly from Amazon and Google. The Anthropic Manifesto had shades of Google DeepMind, especially the last bastion of hype in techno-optimism as a movement as it relates to AI in healthcare and biotech.
Axios noted that “writing a manifesto predicting a glorious AI-driven future has become a mandatory ritual for AI leaders.” It’s not a great sign. The 15,000 word essay by Amodei while better than the immature writing of Sam Altman, is a contradiction in terms.
It’s awkward because pushes back on the idea that he’s a “pessimist” or “doomer” by outlining some grandiose claims for the future of AI. As Anthropic hires big-time product people, OpenAI recently copied them with Canvas eerily similar to Anthropic’s popular and functional Projects.
Amodei’s blog post isn’t for the average AI-curious reader, nor is it a convincing roadmap for the future of AGI, it’s not clear who he is trying to convince? Probably investors.
People are trying to convince us with social posts that NotebookLM is useful in their work? I’m not buying it. Even as Google search and Google SGEs feels very dated.
Perplexity on pace to Raise another $500 million
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