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Google's Best-Kept AI Secret
And our top AI story of the week
AI For All
June 27, 2025
Hello readers,
Welcome to the AI For All newsletter! Today, we’ll be exploring Google’s best-kept AI secret, AI-to-AI communications, and more!
AI Spotlight: Google NotebookLM
What: NotebookLM, Google’s AI-powered research assistant, has managed to fly somewhat under the radar since its launch in 2023. The AI research tool lets you upload PDFs, Google Docs, websites, videos, and more, then ask questions, generate summaries, and even create audio briefings based entirely on your sources. It’s built on Gemini 2.0 and supports a ton of formats.
Why: While the latest big model releases from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google itself tend to steal the spotlight, NotebookLM is one of the more eminently practical and accessible AI tools out there. The Audio Overview feature is the standout. It turns dense reports into casual, listenable summaries you can absorb while doing chores. The host banter can be a little uncanny, but it’s wildly helpful for multitasking or working through a backlog of reading. The fact that NotebookLM doesn’t use your data to train its models is also a big privacy win, and the free tier is solid enough that most folks can get real value without paying a cent.
How: You drop in your materials (reports, articles, meeting notes, transcripts, whatever) and NotebookLM turns them into a fully searchable, citeable mini knowledge base. You can chat with your notebook, ask it to summarize specific documents, or even use a steering prompt to guide how it responds. If you’re on the Pro plan, you can also change the tone and length of answers, create shared notebooks, and get analytics. But the real gem is the Audio Overview feature: it takes your uploaded content and turns it into a surprisingly natural-sounding AI podcast, with two hosts who walk through the material like it’s a news segment.
Our favorite part: Definitely the ability to turn complex material into a personalized podcast. It feels like magic the first time you throw in a 40-page whitepaper and hit play. Suddenly, you can do your research while taking your morning walk.
Pricing:
Free tier: Upload sources, chat with them, generate summaries and timelines, and create a few Audio Overviews.
Pro version: More everything—more sources, more queries, more Audio Overviews, plus team features, analytics, and customization.
Deals or promotions:
No promo codes needed—just sign in with your Google account to start using it for free. Pro plans available via Google One, Google Workspace, or Google Cloud.
🔥 Rapid Fire
Anthropic breaks down AI's decision to blackmail a fictional executive
Publishers facing existential threat from AI, Cloudflare CEO says
AI valuations are verging on the unhinged
A.I. is homogenizing our thoughts
Meta wins AI copyright lawsuit as US judge rules against authors
Sam Altman comes out swinging at The New York Times
Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models
Gemini CLI brings Google’s AI agent to your terminal for free
📖 What We’re Reading
“Digital communication has come a long way. From the telegraph to the telephone, to email, to instant messaging, every leap has changed how we interact. We’ve lived through faxes, Skype calls, Slack messages, Teams meetings, Zoom fatigue - and it all, email remained the backbone of business communication.
Until now.
We’re entering a new phase. Communication is no longer just human-to-human. It’s not even human-to-AI. Increasingly, it’s AI-to-AI.”