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Google's Gemini Notebook helps you research and learn about different topics through AI-generated reports, slideshows, quizzes, audio podcasts, and more. To set this up, you can add specific sources of information to your notebook, such as websites, documents, images, audio files, and videos. Now, there's one more type of source you can include in your research, namely books from Google Play.
This new capability works with books that you purchase through the Google Play store. For now, only certain books, authors, and publishers are supported. But the list is already a hefty one, with 100,000 titles from publishers such as Bloomsbury, De Gruyter Brill, Johns Hopkins University Press, Macmillan Publishers, O'Reilly Media, and Penguin Random House.
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Google has also teamed up with more than 15 bestselling authors to create special featured notebooks that you can view and use by signing in to your Gemini Notebook page. These notebooks aim to supplement supported titles with additional sources and interesting details that let you explore the work of these authors.
Integration with Google Play Books is the first step in the company's new Expert Intelligence initiative. The goal here is to help you better understand your favorite books, authors, and subjects, as well as incorporate them as sources in larger research projects. In the near term, Google plans to add more of its products beyond Play Books and support third-party subscriptions and textbooks.
"We've built the ability to add select ebooks you've purchased from Google Play Books directly to a Gemini Notebook," Google said in its blog post. "This makes it simple for you to ask questions about the book and receive responses grounded directly in that book. You can also use Gemini Notebook to help you understand books in new ways, for example, by generating Infographics, Audio Overviews, Quizzes, or more from the book."
Since you need to own a book from Google Play to add it to a notebook, what happens when you share that notebook with another person? In that case, the book won't be available to them. Instead, the person will be prompted to buy their own copy to view and work with the content.
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