NotebookLM is easily my favorite AI tool, and it has virtually no competition. But there are one or two contenders for its throne. Microsoft has its own answer to NotebookLM locked under a Copilot license, for one thing. And another project exists that's impressive, private and not owned by a big tech company. Enter Open Notebook.
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NotebookLM is an "AI research tool" as Google calls it, but its flexibility lends itself to many names. It's great at breaking down complex topics into information that's palatable and easy to understand, making it perfect for school, work or creative brainstorming. To get started, you feed your sources, such as documents, plain text or web links. NotebookLM will analyze them and use the information to create Audio Overviews, flash cards and more. The best part is that it will only generate output and responses based on your sources, so it's less likely to provide false information or give hallucinatory answers.
Open Notebook is a free open-source project by Luis Noris, and it can do a lot of what NotebookLM can do in a privacy-focused way. You can even run Open Notebook with a local AI model if you want, or choose from popular chatbot options like ChatGPT, Claude and others.
But one thing to note: The setup for Open Notebook is not for everyone. It can be especially tough for someone who is expecting to "sign in and go" like with NotebookLM. Unless you are already familiar with the requirements, of which there are many, you may find yourself hitting a wall before you even get to use Open Notebook. All that said, the fact that Open Notebook exists says a lot about NotebookLM itself and the desire for a more privacy-focused version of the product. What Open Notebook lacks in polish it makes up for in flexibility and features you simply do not (and likely will not) get with NotebookLM anytime soon.
The setup felt like a set up at times
I'm a self-described tinkerer, but the setup for Open Notebook threw me off a few times. You will need a program called Docker to set up a container and some Linux know-how to get things up and running. While I'm decent enough with Linux to break things, Docker and containers were new to me, and that was a sore point for this process.
If you are unfamiliar with setting up containers or Linux, this will probably be a challenge, even with the helpful get started guide. I still needed help from the developer to get everything up and running as it should. The hiccups you encounter may also be dependent on the operating system you want to run Open Notebook on. I was using Windows, but MacOS is apparently easier to get started with.
When everything is set up correctly, you can access Open Notebook though your web browser, just as you would with NotebookLM, although there is no mobile app equivalent. Then, you will need to set up the model you want to use. That was also an adventure for me, but the guide and the Open Notebook Discord community can be helpful if you, like me, get stuck.
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