Tech titan Google announced last April 30 updates to its AI research tool, NotebookLM, whose popular podcast feature is now available in 76 languages.
NotebookLM is an AI tool that went viral a little over a year after its 2023 release. To increase accuracy and reliability, NotebookLM is trained on references uploaded by the user. It originally aimed to help researchers, students, and employees by making connections between sources, answering questions, and generating written study aids like summaries and FAQ sheets.
Then in September 2024, a podcast generation feature called Audio Overview was added to NotebookLM. In a single click, Audio Overview produces concise and engaging “Deep Dive” discussions emceed by lifelike, AI generated hosts to help users quickly learn about their chosen subject.
Audio Overview captured the attention of the Internet mere weeks after its release and users tested it on topics ranging from educational to entertaining. The problem? This feature was only available in English — until now.
Leveraging Google Gemini’s state-of-the-art native audio support, the company expanded this feature to 76 languages across Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America by April 2025.
This expansion even covers Southeast Asian languages including Filipino, Burmese, Malay, Tamil, Thai, and Vietnamese.
During a media briefing, Google Labs software engineers Michael Chen and Usama Bin Shafqat demonstrated Audio Overview’s new capabilities in Urdu and Japanese.
As fluent AI hosts went through their generated lines, transcripts in Nastaliq script and Hiragana and Katakana characters scrolled through the output field for users to refer to later.
On top of this in demand expansion, Chen and Bin Shafqat covered other recent updates to NotebookLM, including the Mindmap feature and Discover Sources feature.
Mindmap generates interactive visual diagrams that helps users grasp the overall structure of their sources and even supports them in uncovering connections between seemingly unrelated concepts.
Discover Sources is an upgrade to Notebook LM’s original feature, wherein its written outputs come with clear citation links that lead users back to the exact section in their uploaded sources that were referenced in the generated output.
With the Discover Sources update, on top of leading back to the original uploads, users can find a curated list of new sources from reputable, high-quality sites on the internet to enhance their research projects.
Bin Shafqat emphasized the significance of user input in AI progress, saying: “On the Audio Overview front, we’re looking forward to hearing all the feedback on languages and all this feedback will actually help us expand to a lot more languages, [while] making sure we’re respecting all the nuances. We’re also definitely looking to add more customization options, so users can tweak and customize the audio overviews to make them more useful.”
“On NotebookLM in general, there’s a lot more that’s planned,” Bin Shafqat hinted.
Chen added: “We’re constantly looking for what’s next, especially in how AI can change how we find and process information, express creativity, and build software.”
