Google is adding purchased books as source material in Gemini Notebook, The Verge reported Thursday. The feature, called Expert Intelligence, lets you bring titles from Google Play Books into a notebook, ask questions about them, and generate plans, infographics, and AI podcasts from the contents. You can also read the full text of the book inside Notebook.
Google Labs editorial director Steven Johnson showed The Verge two examples: a recipe collection built from Michael Pollan’s Food Rules, and a management question answered with Kim Scott’s Radical Candor. More than 100,000 books from publishers including Penguin Random House, Johns Hopkins University Press, Macmillan Publishers, and O’Reilly Media will support the feature at launch. Google also worked with 15 authors, among them Pollan, Scott, Steven Pinker, and Jennifer Wallace, on Featured Notebooks that the authors customize with extra sources and intro letters. Titles that work with the feature will show “Gemini Notebook” under the Tools badge in Google Play Books.
Sharing is gated. If you share a notebook that includes a purchased book, someone who does not own the title will see it listed as a source but cannot view the full text or information drawn from it. Clicking the source sends them to Google Play Books to buy it.
Johnson told The Verge he is interested in “building a collection of people whose work you really value, and kind of creating your own dream team of advisors that are just available to you wherever you go.” He also said Google wants users to bring in knowledge “in a way that creates new revenue possibilities for authors and publishers as well.”
Google plans to bring the same capability to AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app, which can already pull from Gemini Notebook. Johnson said Expert Intelligence will later expand to scholarly articles, magazines, and newspapers.
The classroom use is obvious. Assigned texts become queryable, as long as the student or the school bought them on Play. The publishing pitch is the one Google is selling. Your dream team of advisors is on call, provided the receipt is.