Google has added an “Expert Intelligence” feature to its Gemini Notebook AI note-taking app, allowing users to import books they have bought through Google Play Books and interact with their contents. Users can ask questions, create plans, infographics and AI-generated podcasts, making purchased books more usable as personalised reference material while potentially creating new revenue opportunities for authors and publishers.

More than 100,000 books will initially support the feature, including titles from Penguin Random House, Macmillan, O’Reilly Media and Johns Hopkins University Press. Google has also worked with 15 authors on customised “Featured Notebooks”, and says shared notebooks will not expose a book’s text or related information to people who have not bought it; the feature may later expand to Search’s AI Mode, Gemini, and scholarly, magazine and newspaper articles.