Questions From the Room

Real questions from the Hackfort workshop. Real answers. This page collects the best Q&A moments and fills in the ones we didn’t have time to get to.

🔰 Getting Started

Do I need to pay for NotebookLM?

No. NotebookLM is free with a Google account. The free tier is genuinely capable — 50 sources per notebook, all Studio features included. NotebookLM Plus adds expanded limits, faster audio generation, and additional enterprise features for power users and teams.

Does it work on mobile?

Yes. NotebookLM has a mobile-friendly web interface and the Gemini app integration works on mobile. The full three-panel desktop layout is better for building — mobile is better for consuming outputs like audio overviews.

What if I don’t have anything to upload?

That’s fine. You can paste in any text directly, use a YouTube URL, or paste a website link. During the workshop, I shared a backup YouTube link specifically for people who came empty-handed.

Can I share a notebook with someone else?

Yes. Notebooks can be shared with view or edit access, similar to Google Docs. Shared notebooks let multiple people query the same source collection.

🔒 Privacy Questions

Is Google using my uploaded documents to train its AI?

No. Google does not use the personal data you upload to NotebookLM to train its underlying foundation models. Your sources are treated as private data that stays within the context of your specific notebooks.

What if I submit feedback in the interface?

If you log in with a personal Google account and submit feedback, human reviewers may see that interaction. Avoid submitting sensitive documents and then providing feedback on them.

What about Google Workspace users?

Workspace and Workspace for Education users get full privacy — no human review of uploads, queries, or responses, and data is not used for AI training.

Can I upload sensitive work documents?

That’s a judgment call based on your organization’s policies. NotebookLM’s privacy protections are real — but your employer may have rules about what can go into third-party tools. When in doubt, check with IT.

💡 Capability Questions

Can it search the internet?

Not in the traditional sense. The “Discover Sources” feature in the source panel can help you find and add web content, and Deep Research mode can search the web to build your source library. But active chat queries only search within your uploaded sources, not the open web.

How is this different from just asking ChatGPT?

ChatGPT answers from its training data — the internet up to its cutoff date, plus whatever you paste in. NotebookLM only answers from what you upload, and every answer comes with a citation back to your source. That grounding is the fundamental difference: less hallucination risk, more verifiability, and the AI genuinely “knows” your specific material instead of generic information about a topic.

Can it do math or work with spreadsheet data?

It can read and reference numbers from your sources and create data tables from structured content. It’s not a calculator and won’t run formulas. For actual data analysis, export your NotebookLM data table to Google Sheets and work there.

How many sources can I add?

Up to 50 sources per notebook on the free tier. Each source can be up to 500,000 words.

🎙️ Audio & Studio Questions

The audio sounds incredibly real. Is it actually AI?

Yes, fully AI-generated. The voices, the conversation flow, the natural-sounding pauses — all generated. NotebookLM uses Google’s Gemini and audio generation models. It’s one of the most polished AI audio products available right now.

Can I download the audio?

Yes. Once generated, Audio Overviews can be downloaded as audio files to share, publish, or use elsewhere.

The Timelines and FAQs buttons are gone. What happened?

Google removed them in a UI update. The capability still exists — it just moved to prompts. See the Prompt Library for the exact prompts that restore both features. The prompts actually give you more control over the output than the buttons ever did.

🛠️ Troubleshooting

My source uploaded but the answers don’t seem to use it.

Check the source toggle at the bottom of the chat window — make sure the source is active (toggled on). Also try asking a more specific question that directly references content from that source.

The Audio Overview doesn’t match my sources accurately.

This occasionally happens with very long or complex sources. Try adding a short summary Google Doc alongside the main source to give the AI a cleaner orientation to the material.

A YouTube video won’t add as a source.

The video likely lacks a transcript. NotebookLM uses the video’s caption/transcript data. Try finding a version of the content with captions, or manually transcribe a key segment and paste it as text.