Google continues to build out its AI-powered research assistant, NotebookLM, adding multilingual capabilities to one of its more distinct features. The company announced that Audio Overviews, which generate podcast-style summaries from users’ source materials, can now be produced in over 50 languages beyond the original English.
This expansion, following the tool’s global rollout to over 200 countries previously, is attributed to the native audio processing capabilities of Google’s Gemini models.
Users interacting with NotebookLM can now access a new “Output language” option via the settings gear icon. Selecting a preference from the extensive list—which includes Afrikaans, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Turkish, various Spanish and French dialects, Chinese variants, and many others—means both AI chat responses and the generated Audio Overviews will adopt that language.
Google illustrated the utility with an example: “a teacher preparing a lesson on the Amazon rainforest can share resources in various languages — like a Portuguese documentary, a Spanish research paper and English study reports — with their students. The students can upload these and can generate an Audio Overview of key insights in their preferred language. This capability breaks down language barriers and makes the information more accessible to everyone.”
Google also noted this multilingual rollout represents an “early look at what’s possible with this feature — we plan to keep building and refining it based on your feedback,” suggesting potential initial variations in quality across languages.
NotebookLM’s Expanding Research Capabilities
This multilingual audio feature arrives shortly after several other updates aimed at making NotebookLM a more versatile research assistant. The Audio Overviews feature itself, first seen in September 2024, was English-only at first, while getting frequent new updates such as web powered source discovery this April.
The web search capabilities called “Discover sources,” allow NotebookLM to proactively find, analyze, and summarize external web content based on a user’s prompt. At the same time, NotebookLM gained improved PDF comprehension, adding interpretation of embedded graphs and images.
Just before that, in March, Google rolled out Mind Maps, letting users visualize their notes and the connections between topics. Support for ingesting Google Slides, YouTube videos (processing transcripts), and audio files arrived in late 2024, broadening the types of source material NotebookLM can analyze.
Subscription Access and Workspace Integration
NotebookLM originated as Project Tailwind during Google I/O 2023. More advanced functionality, such as higher usage limits and customizable AI personas (“Analyst,” “Guide,” or user-defined), resides in NotebookLM Plus.
This tier launched in December 2024 primarily for enterprise use but was extended to individual consumers in February 2025 via the $19.99/month Google One AI Premium plan. While Google’s announcement didn’t specify tier limitations for the new languages, access to the full suite of capabilities may depend on this premium subscription.
NotebookLM’s development also appears to influence other Google products. Audio functions in Google Docs were also inspired by NotebookLM’s Audio Overviews. This cross-pollination is part of Google’s wider integration of Gemini AI into Google Workspace, which includes updates to Sheets, Meet, Chat, and the introduction of the Workspace Flows automation platform.
Privacy, Competition, and Future Steps
As NotebookLM handles increasingly diverse inputs, Google continues to point to its Workspace data handling policies, stating that “your data is your data” and isn’t used for external model training without consent. Introduced alongside broader Workspace
While NotebookLM Plus offers enterprise-grade security features, the specifics for Google One subscribers using the tool warrant attention.
Google’s development of NotebookLM as a dedicated research and synthesis tool contrasts with Microsoft’s approach of integrating Copilot features directly into its Office suite.
The rapid addition of features like multilingual audio, web search, and visual mapping aims to differentiate NotebookLM in a field that also includes open-source alternatives focused on customization or basic conversion tasks. You can explore the updated NotebookLM at notebooklm.google.
