Google’s AI suite, which previously contained the Bard and Duet apps, has been transformed and rebranded into one powerful tool: Gemini.
If you haven’t been using Google’s AI suite yet, now is the time. Along with the rebrand, Google Workspace users now enjoy enterprise-grade data protection, which can make you rest a bit easier about using AI for simple things like first drafts, social media posts and emails.
Keep in mind that Google has a strong disclaimer about editing your content and double-checking the information that Gemini serves up, as well as not entering anything confidential since Gemini’s human reviewers could see it. Specifically, it says “Don’t enter anything you wouldn’t want reviewed or used,” where “used” refers specifically to Google using it.
Notebook LM and Gemini: A powerful productivity combo
Even with that disclaimer in mind, Gemini can save you a lot of time, especially with the introduction of Notebook LM. Notebook LM is a separate app that is billed as a virtual research assistant. It keeps all of your relevant files in one place while you’re working on a project.
According to Google, the idea behind Notebook LM is to make all of the information available to us easier to parse and more accessible. Keep in mind that it is still in the experimental stage, so there may be some glitches.
Computerworld has some excellent suggestions for how to use Notebook LM, including collating pertinent information from a number of documents, writing an executive summary for a long document, and collating information from web searches.
Unlike Gemini, your personal data is not used to train Notebook LM, so it’s the more secure choice if you’re working on something sensitive like a product launch or confidential HR documentation. The disclaimer about editing your content still applies, but Notebook LM is less of a writing assistant and more of an information gathering and organizing tool.
If you’re less of a writer and more of an idea person, your ideal use case for both tools would be to use Notebook LM to organize your information and Gemini to write your content based on the information gathered into Notebook LM. If you prefer to kick it old school and write, you may want to skip over Gemini entirely and just use Notebook LM as your virtual assistant for background research before you write everything up in Google Docs.
If you’re wondering why you just don’t do business the old fashioned way and write based on Google search results, think about it this way - how many times have you found a great article, but lost it in the tides of the Internet? Now, instead of bookmarking it in your browser like it’s 2002, you can save it to Notebook LM and tag it with the topic or project of your choice.
At the very least, Notebook LM is a go-to tool if you’re trying to create an executive summary, but it can easily be so much more. And with the security updates to Gemini, it is business-ready to be rolled out as a productivity solution for Google Workspace users.
Google is constantly adding new features for Google Workspace users - most at no extra charge. If you want to upgrade your office suite experience to Workspace, get in touch with us.
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