Google’s AI note-taking app now allows you to interact with books
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.
- Gemini Notebook can now analyse eligible purchased Google Play Books.
- More than 100,000 books initially support the feature.
- Sharing safeguards prevent non-owners accessing book content.
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Google’s Gemini Notebook is an AI tool for organising notes and asking questions about information. Google Play Books is the company’s shop for buying digital books. Connecting the two lets readers use books they own as sources for questions and other AI-created material.
The books come from publishers including Penguin Random House, Macmillan, O’Reilly Media and Johns Hopkins University Press. Authors and publishers hold rights to their work, so how it is used in AI tools can affect control over the text and how they earn money. Google says people who have not bought a book will not be able to see its text through a shared notebook.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
The feature could make books more useful by helping readers find relevant passages, explore ideas and turn what they have bought into plans or other study materials. If access is limited to purchasers as Google says, it may add value without giving away the text, while creating new ways for authors and publishers to reach readers and earn revenue.
The case against
AI-generated answers and summaries could reduce the incentive to read books in full, and may misrepresent an author’s ideas even when based on a purchased copy. The arrangement also gives Google a larger role in how books are discovered and interpreted, raising questions about control, compensation and whether authors and publishers will share fairly in any new value.