Ep 519: NotebookLM Updates – Thinking model and 50+ languages. What you need to know.

Topics Covered in This Episode:

1. NotebookLM's Major 2024 AI Tool Updates
2. Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash Multilingual Features
3. NotebookLM's Gemini Model Integration Details
4. AI Reasoning Models in NotebookLM Explained
5. AI Audio Overviews in 50+ Languages
6. Exploring NotebookLM's Mind Map Feature
7. Discover Sources Function in NotebookLM
8. Using Deep Research with NotebookLM
9. 
   

Keywords:

NotebookLM, Google Gemini, AI update, Gemini 2.5 flash model, Multilingual audio overviews, Large Language Model, Deep research tools, Google AI Studio, AI-powered deep dives, Gemini 2025, OpenAI, ChatGPT, AI-driven mind maps, IBM Watson x, Enterprise governance, AI reasoning model, Language support, AI-powered conversation, Audio overview features, AI flash model, Multimodal AI, Data protection, AI Studio integration, AI capabilities, Gemini reasoning, Machine learning advancements, AI feature updates, Enterprise AI solutions, Google Gemini thinking model, AI-driven insights, Language model updates, AI-driven research.

Podcast Transcript

Jordan Wilson [00:00:16]:
One of the most powerful AI tools available to literally everyone and for free has been updated in a couple of really big ways. I'm talking about NotebookLM, none other than the winner of our twenty twenty four AI tool of the year. So this model or this feature, I guess, from Google is extremely powerful, and I think it's worth revisiting mainly because of two big updates. That is Google has updated, kind of the Gemini model that now runs NotebookLM and is making the extremely popular and sometimes viral audio overviews, multilingual. So we're gonna go over those updates and a little more today on everyday AI. What's going on y'all? My name is Jordan Wilson, and welcome to Everyday AI. This is your daily livestream podcast and free daily newsletter, helping us all not just learn AI, but how we can actually leverage it and use it to grow our companies and our careers. So if that sounds like kinda like, yo, that's kinda what I'm trying to do.

Jordan Wilson [00:01:33]:
You're in the right place. Maybe you listen all the time. Maybe it's your first time. If it's your first time, we do this literally every day, Monday through Friday at least, live 07:30AM Central Standard Time. So shout out to our live stream audience. And, one thing I like to say, it's kind of the realest thing in artificial intelligence. A lot of the things that you maybe, see or read or, you know, if you watch certain tutorials on YouTube, a lot of it's, you know, little prefabricated. Right? It's it's very polished, very edited.

Jordan Wilson [00:02:04]:
So on today's show, I'm gonna be doing something live. So, I needed to use NotebookLM anyways, for a project that I'm working on here in Boston. So I said, what better way to explain some of these new updates than to even just walk you through, my process as I do it. Alright. So thank you for tuning in, and if you haven't already, please go to youreverydayai.com. There, we're gonna give you the daily news for today. We're just gonna put it on there, and I want this, episode to run too long. But, also, you can get the, the highlights from today's podcast slash live stream.

Jordan Wilson [00:02:40]:
So if you're hearing something and maybe you're, you know, out on the, elliptical or, you know, doing three things in your house just listening to me in the background, you're like, wait. What did Jordan say about that new feature? Well, it's all gonna be, in our newsletter. So make sure you just go check it out at your everydayai.com. Alright. It it it's funny. I was actually talking with someone today. So I am in Boston, here in case you're watching the live stream and podcast audience. This is one of those.

Jordan Wilson [00:03:08]:
You might wanna check out your show notes and just watch the video for this one. Because it is it is a little more visual, but I'm gonna be walking through this. But, anyways, I was having a conversation, with someone today here in Boston. They'll be like, hey. What's your show gonna be tomorrow? And I'm like, I have no clue. It's it's it's always fun yet sometimes frightening, but I hand, kind of, handed the reins over to our, newsletter audience and said, what do you all want to hear more of? There's a lot of new things, that were announced this week, this past week that I thought could be a great episode. So I asked you all in our newsletter. So another reason you should be signing up and reading it.

Jordan Wilson [00:03:42]:
But I said, hey. You know, OpenAI and Chat Sheetviki released their new shopping feature. Claude had a bunch of new very powerful enterprise integrations like Zapier, and then I said, NotebookLM has some really cool updates that we haven't covered yet. And I said, what do you wanna hear? And you all, decided NotebookLM. So, nothing like me not having a clue what I'm going to be working on, hours each day and handing it all over to you. But, you know, kind of my joke is I work for you all, except it's for free. So alright. Let's, enough chitchat.

Jordan Wilson [00:04:12]:
Let's dive in, and talk about what's new. Actually, I'm gonna go out of order as long as you don't mind. Last year, moneys can we just get a little little wild right now? And may we? Alright. So what I'm actually gonna do right now is, and and and hopefully, y'all can see, my screen here. I'm gonna start doing a little bit of deep research. Alright? So, let me first before we even go into what's new, because I don't want this to go too long. I'm gonna be doing some deep research in the background and, like I told you all, I'm here, at IBM Think, IBM's conference. So, very, excited to be partnering, with IBM for this.

Jordan Wilson [00:04:55]:
And, let me say this. I obviously follow everything that all the big tech companies do. But I'm a small business, so I'm not using IBM's products and services on an ongoing basis. Right? We consult with some clients who are. And and I've had a lot of great IBM guests on this show throughout the years, but I always need to do my research. Right? So this is something, you know, whether it's for a conference, podcast episodes. I use NotebookLM all the time, and where I normally start is by doing multiple deep researches first. So I'm gonna be running these in the background, but I I want to show you all this is live.

Jordan Wilson [00:05:30]:
This is the work I would have been doing anyways. So I said, hey. I'm glad that you all voted to, see NotebookLM, because I needed to do this work anyways, for the conference tomorrow. I'm excited, or or or sorry. The, the the the keynote is today. So, I'm excited for this, and I needed to be doing this anyways. So, what I'm gonna do, I'm a very simple prompt. I'm gonna throw this into multiple deep research, products right away.

Jordan Wilson [00:05:57]:
Nothing crazy here. So I'm jumping around. I'm using, Perplexity's, Deep Research. I'm using, Google Gemini's, Deep research, I'm using, let me do that. I think I think that's all of them. So, I know for, Google Gemini's deep research, I have to click start research. For chat g b t's version, which is really good. Oh, but I didn't do it correctly.

Jordan Wilson [00:06:27]:
For their version of deep research, I'm going to have to answer some questions. So I'll at least walk you through this, then we're gonna talk about what's new inside NotebookLM, and then we're gonna come back and use it and show you these new features. Because it's like, I could just show you these bullet points, but you might as well see, hopefully, some of the benefits in action. So first, ChatGPT is the only one that asked me questions. So essentially, what I said in this prompt, I said, please give me a month by month breakdown of IBM's Watson x and Watson, Watson x AI updates from month to month starting in January 2024 and ending in May 2025. Please slowly research, go step by step, all that good stuff that I normally do. So I have to ask, answer these questions from ChatGPT. It's saying only official product updates and feature, announcements from IBM or also third party.

Jordan Wilson [00:07:18]:
So I'm just gonna say both. Normally, I'd go through and and go through a process, but I'm doing this live. So, just gonna go quickly. Two says, should I include Watson x governance and Watson, Watson x data updates or only Watson x AI? So I'm just gonna say all. And then three, do you want the updates to include technical details, model changes, API improvements, or only high level summaries? So for this, I'm gonna say, mainly, summaries, but some technical details. So let's do that. Alright. Perfect.

Jordan Wilson [00:07:55]:
So now that we did that and we have our deep researchers researching, let's talk about what is new in notebook l web. So I told you the two things. Number one is we have the new Gemini 2.5 flash model, which is a thinking and a reasoning model, now powering, NotebookLM. And then we also have 50 plus new languages that the audio overviews can work in. Alright. So let's first go over the audio overview updates. So now there are, like I said, more than 50 supported languages, letting users hear AI generated document summaries in many, tongues besides just English, which is what it was only available on, previously. And this is a pretty big technical step considering Google's user base.

Jordan Wilson [00:08:48]:
Right? They have, users all over the world. So it's it's really, I think, broadening who can actually use this tool. Right? Because I think a lot of people, were initially drawn to NotebookLM. Right? It's been out for a long time, but I think people really didn't start paying, too much attention to it, which is sad because even before the AI audio overviews, which are a fantastic feature by the way, even before that, it was a revolutionary AI product. But I think a lot of people didn't start paying attention to NotebookLM until the audio overviews, which are these kind of, AI deep dive podcast where, you know, two AI hosts, have conversations about just the documents you upload. So, you know, many people from all over the world are like, hey. What about my language? So NotebookLM, and the Google team, have been rolling out a lot of great kind of quality of life updates, but they said that this was one of the biggest ones, as well as, iOS and, Android apps, which I believe both of those are rolling out. Not yet, but there is a sign up for those.

Jordan Wilson [00:09:53]:
But the audio, overviews in 50 new languages, that's out now. So there's it's very easy to click your preferred or to pick your preferred language, and there's so many options. You know, some popular, widely spoken languages across the globe like Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, German, and a lot more. Also, it's important to know that NotebookLM is still experimental, but now it's gonna appeal to a lot more people. So, you you know, I have been following, kind of the conversation along, on Twitter and on Google's blog. So, you know, Google says, yeah, there's there's bugs. We're getting this worked out, and they've had a lot more time to work it out, in the English language. But, I think this move right now puts Google ahead of many of their rivals who haven't offered such wide language, support.

Jordan Wilson [00:10:41]:
Not even just with the audio summaries, but just in general. Right? When we talk about the future of large language models is multimodal, a lot of, you know, the big players aren't supporting 50 languages right now. So Google is also signaling that multimodal AI isn't just nice to have. It's kind of essential. So pretty exciting, updates there. And when we go in and do this live, I will show you how to, select a different output language, and we will test it as well. I haven't tested this yet. So we're gonna be doing it, live.

Jordan Wilson [00:11:16]:
Sometimes I like doing these things live and, you know, I get to figure out or or or sorry. Find out and and learn alongside you all, at the same time. So, yeah, none of this has been, edited or scripted or anything like that. Alright. Next. And and how busy has Google been that this wasn't even on their blog posts? Their other big update was updating, the actual model running, NotebookLM, which is a really big deal. So, the their their their tweet from NotebookLM said, it's been a busy week for us, so busy that we forgot to mention that NotebookLM is officially powered by Gemini 2.5 flash. The 2.5 models are thinking models, so you should start to see more comprehensive answers, particularly to complex multi step reasoning questions.

Jordan Wilson [00:12:05]:
And this is huge. Okay. This is huge. And let's just start why. Well, if you don't follow, large language model updates, you you know, day to day, like myself, maybe you're more of a casual listener to this podcast. This is big. The difference between, kind of quote unquote old school transformer models and quote unquote new school, reasoning or thinking models, the the gap is wide. You you know, these newer models that think or reason, plan ahead.

Jordan Wilson [00:12:39]:
It's almost like they use this, this chain of thought reasoning, that, you know, normally a, you know, quote unquote, you know, experienced prompt engineer, could still squeeze this kind of juice out of a large language model, but you have to be, extremely experienced. You have to know what you're doing and really put in the time, to get the best or the most out of large language models. But these thinking models are much different. Right? They plan ahead. They think. They reason. You you know, it's fascinating reading, you you know, whether the raw chain of thought or the summarized chain of thought, you you know, to see kind of how these models are thinking. You know, it's it's it's really interesting.

Jordan Wilson [00:13:18]:
Sometimes scary because you'll see a model on its own start to go down path a, and then realize path a might have a dead end. And, oh, I actually need a fork, and I need to create a path b, path c, and I might, you know, step back a couple of steps. So you can learn a lot if you're a dork like me and read chain of thought or summarize chain of thought. It helps you, write better prompts. It helps you use these models better, but, you know, it's pretty big. Now that NotebookLM is powered by a thinking model in Gemini 2.5 flash. And don't let that flash moniker fool you. Right? Because, you know, I would say when the flash series first came out, people really thought of this as, you know, oh, this is Google's, you know, cheap and fast model.

Jordan Wilson [00:14:01]:
And yes, it is. But Gemini 2.5 flash, if you look at different benchmarks, in some benchmarks, it is a top five model. The flash, the quote unquote flash, the the the one that's supposed to be, oh, this is the small and cheap model. Right? If you're using it on the back end on the API, it is extremely powerful. I would say it is one of the more impressive models in the world, just because number one, how fast it is. If you are using it on the back end as a developer, it's extremely affordable in terms of the, price per performance. So if you are using it inside NotebookLM or inside Google Gemini or inside, you know, AI studio, you're not paying for the actual usage, right? But previously, before this NotebookLM was running on Gemini two point o flash, which was not a thinking model. So now we get, answers that show much more nuance.

Jordan Wilson [00:14:52]:
And hopefully, in this example, we'll we'll have something that, can maybe, flex or show, kind of its thinking capabilities. I mean, we'll see we're doing this all live. So that is, that are that's two of the things that are new. And I'm gonna be demoing, a couple of the other, new advancements, not as new. So these are both, I I I think the audio overviews came out just over a week ago. And Gemini 2.5 flash, which again, they did even put out a a blog post about this because it came out, on a Friday afternoon. Right? That's Google doesn't stop shipping anymore. It's it's like I'm looking out my, my, window here in my hotel room at the, the harbor.

Jordan Wilson [00:15:42]:
And, you know, Google is is like a shipyard. Like, I'm looking at all these ships, and I'm like, that's Google. Like, they're not like, they haven't stopped shipping, I don't think, since December. Even on the weekends, I mean, they're squashing bugs, adding new updates. It's it's it's it's pretty impressive. So, let's jump in. Let's do this live. This is always fun.

Jordan Wilson [00:16:01]:
What could go wrong, doing, this live, on absolutely terrible absolutely terrible hotel Wi Fi? Nothing could go wrong. Right? Okay. So as a quick reminder, here's essentially what I, told these different models. So I said, please give me a month by month breakdown of IBM's Watson x and Watson x AI updates from month to month starting in January 2024 and ending, with May 2025. Alright. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to copy and paste all of this information, into NotebookLM. So first, I am here in, perplexity. I probably just should have scrolled down to the bottom and just clicked the copy button.

Jordan Wilson [00:16:51]:
That would have been a little little better. Right? Alright. So I'm gonna copy this information, and I'm gonna go into NotebookLM. So I am on the NotebookLM plus. So NotebookLM is free to use. If you want a little, better limits, better data protection, then you should probably be on the NotebookLM plus. So I'm just going to, and actually let me just give a thirty second primer on how this works and why I think it's it's extremely special. It's a grounded model.

Jordan Wilson [00:17:17]:
So what that means is it uses the Gemini 2.5 flash model, but it is only going to work on the, the information that you enter. So think of all the different ways that you can use NotebookLM. Right? You could put in all your all your meeting notes, you know, long email threads if you're working on a project. Right? You can do all of these things in, ChatGPT, in Gemini, in, Claude's projects. Right? There's so many different ways to do this, but the the downside right? There's a con to that as well. You you know, great pros. You can do this in a lot of different, fashions or there's a lot of different ways, to pet the cat. I'm not gonna say skin the cat.

Jordan Wilson [00:17:56]:
I don't I don't like that saying I like cats. So I'm never gonna say there's different ways to skin a cat. There's different ways to pet a cat. Right? You can pet a cat with your your elbow, your hands, you know, if the cat, you you know, rubs up on you, that's a different way to pet the cat. So you could you you you could do this in a variety, of ways. But let me just let's just jump straight. Alright. So, first, I'm going to paste all my information.

Jordan Wilson [00:18:21]:
Alright. This will probably make a little bit more sense, when I do this live. Alright. So for our podcast audience, all I did, I went to notebooklm.google.com. Like I said, I have an account, but it's grounded. So what that means now is I I pasted in the results from, Perplexity's deep research. And now, you know, my this model is grounded. So the quick primer is I can now go into, you know, this NotebookLM, and I only have information, about, Watson x.

Jordan Wilson [00:18:55]:
And I can say, you know, what's, what's Chicago known for? Right? I hit enter, the response I get back. It's gonna take a second because it is using a thinking model, and it doesn't it doesn't say anything. Right? It says based on the sources provided and our conversation history, there is no information about what the city of Chicago is known for. So, as an example, I can if I go into Gemini and I use 2.5 flash, actually, I can't, in here. Oh, yeah. There we go. And and say what is Chicago known for as an example? It's obviously going to give me an answer on what Chicago is known for. Right? So, there we go, and you can see the thinking, inside, if you are in Gemini or Google's AI Studio, you can see the thinking.

Jordan Wilson [00:19:46]:
Unfortunately, you can't see the thinking, in NotebookLM even though you're using the same model. So if you do wanna see, like, oh, what's the difference? You might wanna go into Google Gemini, but you'll see here, when I'm using Google Gemini, the same model, it's giving me a response. It's saying, here's what Chicago's known for because it's still using its own internal knowledge base. It's still accessing the Internet when it needs to. So that's the big difference, with using NotebookLM. It is grounded only in the information that you put in. Alright. So now that we got that out of the way, and you can probably then see and and understand why it might be extremely impressive to use a model that can think.

Jordan Wilson [00:20:25]:
A model that can reason only with your data. That is huge, y'all. Yes. Obviously, we have a lot of thinking models. Right? A lot of great thinking models that we can use, but you can't necessarily control, at least not easily with a lot of iteration and some, you know, some some some basic, to advanced prompt engineering skills. You can't necessarily control where they think. Right? You can't say I I I mean, you can say, like, hey. Only using, you you know, the the the files in this project, you know, the information in this project.

Jordan Wilson [00:20:59]:
Right? You can try to control its thinking, but very often, it will go outside of those bounds anyways. It might use its own internal data. It might go out and use information from the web. So there's very many instances where you only want a model, to use the information that you've given it and absolutely nothing else, which is why I am personally extremely excited, for this. Alright. So, I'm I'm clearing out this chat. I'm gonna go ahead and label, here inside NotebookLM. I'm just gonna label the source.

Jordan Wilson [00:21:29]:
Alright. It's good practice. So I'm just gonna say perplexity, deep research, saving that. I'm gonna jump over. I'm gonna use, here's Grox. I'm gonna scroll to, I think it's at the bottom there to copy. There we go. I'm gonna go add a source, paste in text, click insert.

Jordan Wilson [00:21:49]:
If you are brand new, there's different ways that you can add sources inside NotebookLM. You can connect directly to your Google Drive, obviously, Google slides, different links to websites, YouTube videos, or just copied text. And I am on the, plus NotebookLM plus, which is part of the Google Gemini one plan. You get access to this. So it's not a separate subscription. That's another good thing to know. So as an example, if you already have access to Gemini advanced, you know, in your organization, then you have access to notebook online plus. So you can have 300 sources, which is a ton of information.

Jordan Wilson [00:22:22]:
I'm gonna go ahead oh, I already pasted the second one. I'm gonna go up and label that. I'm gonna label it, Grok Deep Research. There we go. I'm gonna go into now, Google Gemini, and their Deep Research 2.5, so good. Their new version is extremely impressive. I will say early on, OpenAI was winning the deep research game. Now I'm not so sure.

Jordan Wilson [00:22:48]:
Alright. So we're gonna go in, we're gonna paste text here. Alright. And then I'm going to label that here in a second once it's done as Gemini deep research. K. I'm gonna save that, and then we're gonna see if our last one is done yet. It's not quite done. OpenAI's deep research, usually, it it had been the best until Google's, updated their Deep Research to 2.5, Pro, not the Flash version.

Jordan Wilson [00:23:19]:
Google's, Google Gemini Deep Research uses 2.5 Pro, which is also the, kind of the big brother of 2.5 Flash, which is what now uses. So it's still, or or sorry. So, ChatGPT's version of deep research is still going, but let's go ahead while we wait, and I'm gonna go show, some of the other new features. So aside, from audio, overview now having 50, languages. There's more. And actually for the sake of timing and doing things in order, right, we gotta get our PEMDAS, correct. I always joke about that with my wife. Like, right, there's so many things to do.

Jordan Wilson [00:23:57]:
I'm like, alright. What's the PEMDAS on this one? What's our order of operations? Alright. So order of operations actually, because it might take a minute. We actually need to look at the languages, and the outputs. So right now, it's very easy to use these different languages. It's actually as easy as clicking. So I'm gonna go to settings and I'm gonna go to output language. And then, you are gonna get something that says configure settings, and then there's all of these different new options.

Jordan Wilson [00:24:25]:
I mean, there's so many here. So I'm going to, as an example, I wish I was actually bilingual. I'm not. It's embarrassing to say. So I'm scrolling through here. I was trying to find, Spanish. I know Spanish is one of there we go. Espanol.

Jordan Wilson [00:24:46]:
Alright. I'm gonna go Espanol Latin America, and click save there. All right. So FYI, I haven't done this yet. I hope it works. If not, I'll reach out to the Google Gemini team, but I'm sure they're already on it. So I'm going to go ahead and also click customize. All right.

Jordan Wilson [00:25:04]:
So on this deep dive conversation, the audio overview on the right hand side, I'm sure many of you have heard it. If not, essentially there's a male and a female, AI generated podcast hosts. You know, they banter around a little bit, but they essentially have a conversation, about just your documents that you upload. So very useful. So I'm actually just going to click generate. Nothing else. You can customize, the instructions, but, you know, in this case, I'm not going to mainly because, I'm probably not going to be able to understand 90% of it because it's going to be in Spanish and I am not fluent in Spanish. Alright.

Jordan Wilson [00:25:40]:
But as we, wait for that, we can also then talk about, a couple of the new updates as well that, you you know, new ish. So two other ones. So like I said, we have the new Gemini two point five flash, which we're gonna show off as we ask it. Hopefully, a a tough question here in a minute. We have the audio overview, now available in 50 plus languages, and we're letting that run now. A couple other new ones that I don't think we've talked about on the podcast, at least. Maybe we did a a YouTube tutorial on some of these, but, one is mind maps, which I really, really like. So essentially when you're using NotebookLM, there's three different panes, right? So, on the left hand side, you have your sources and you can add a source, then you have a chat.

Jordan Wilson [00:26:30]:
And then you have a studio on the right hand side, which is essentially where you have your audio overview, as well as you can create different notes, different preset notes, or you can create notes manually. So NotebookLM works a little bit different, than than some of the, other large language models or AI chat bots that you're used to working with. But in the middle pane, you know, you can also click overview there, but here's where the mind map is. Alright? That's one of these new features. A lot of people struggle to find it, because as like, especially if you're not zoomed in or if you're too zoomed in. Right? So like, on my screen right here, you can't really see my maps. And once you start chatting, because you can obviously chat with all of your documents and sources just like you would inside Google Gemini or ChatGPT, but then, that kind of mind map piece disappears. It's really just in the summary.

Jordan Wilson [00:27:20]:
So I'm gonna go ahead and click mind map, and then you'll see on the right hand side, it says generating mind map. And I'm not actually sure if it's going to generate the mind map second, and we might have to completely wait, for the, audio overview, to to to go. I I've actually never tested that, before, trying to generate both of them at the same time. Usually, the mind map, just takes a a couple of seconds, to generate, but maybe it just put it in queue. So oh, no. It didn't. Okay. There we go.

Jordan Wilson [00:27:52]:
So the mind map is now done, so we can at least, look at this. So what you will notice here is when I switch the output language, it also, let me just see. Let me just double check here. Okay. It didn't, I, I didn't know if it was gonna change, the actual language of the text updates. It did not. All right. So let's just, let's just walk, walk through it.

Jordan Wilson [00:28:23]:
And the reason I said that is because the name of the, the name of the mind map is in Spanish now. So I'm like, oh, is the content of the mind map going to be in Spanish? And it's not. It's in English. So, it looks like even when you change, the output language, it does not impact, the, the mind map. So, but here's what's pretty amazing. Right? And I'm gonna be, kind of studying up on this, for, kind of the the IBM work that I'm gonna be doing this week. So it automatically started breaking this down into four categories. Right? And then like any if you've ever used an interactive mind map, very cool.

Jordan Wilson [00:29:06]:
I love them. If you're a visual learner, I I honestly like right. NotebookLM has so many use cases. I think so many people should be using it, dumping all your meeting transcripts in there, long email threads, you know, all your files, your your Google Docs, whatever. But, you know, another thing is just when you're trying to learn a new topic, and I think, both with the audio overviews and with the mind map, you know, I don't know any better tool to learn something new than NotebookLM. So, you know, now, you you know, it it kind of gave it a title. It said IBM Watson x and Watson x AI updates January 2024 to May 2025. And then it broke it down into four major categories.

Jordan Wilson [00:29:47]:
So it says platform and ecosystem updates, Watson x AI updates, Watson, Watson x governance updates, and locks Watson component updates. So, I I I personally follow, the, x AI. Actually, I probably follow both of these, but, I'm kind of curious because I haven't followed the x, Watson x AI updates as closely as some of the others. So I can break that down, and now it, pops out, foundation models in life cycle, feature and and capability updates, auto AI and rag updates, and pricing adjustments. So I actually wanna learn more about the auto AI and rag updates of the Watson x AI platform, and then I click it again. So if I zoom out here, right, so now we're already, four tiers deep in my interactive mind map, which is really cool. And I see, at least for two of these sub points, there's even more. So it looks like there was some updates here in April, 2025.

Jordan Wilson [00:30:50]:
So I can click that. So when you click on an actual element, what it does is it also sends it back into the chat. So essentially, if you just wanna know more about something, you can click kind of the middle of that little element, and it's gonna break it out, into the chat interface, which is what it's doing right now. But I can also see that there's, you know, some other as I bring the mind map back up. I mean, for our livestream audience, this is pretty cool if you're a visual learner. Right? And you can expand all of these. Right? So, for our, podcast or or sorry. For our livestream audience, I'm gonna zoom out here, and you'll see, you know, just how impressive, this actually is.

Jordan Wilson [00:31:36]:
I'm not going to, you know, go through and read all of these, but, I mean, y'all, this is like so zoomed out. This looks like, you know, in in all of those crime shows when the the the crazy person that can't sleep, like, I feel it's usually like Liam Neeson or or Mel Gibson. Right? And they have all these, you know, you know, pictures on the wall and all these notes, and it looks like wild. And you decide, woah. Just this is like a like, like, visual chaos. So it's kind of like that instead of chaos, it's clarity. Right? Because now we have this great, mind map overview that I can dive into a lot more, extremely impressive. And then you'll see, obviously, because I clicked the output language to Spanish, now the text that I, entered in here is in Spanish as well.

Jordan Wilson [00:32:28]:
Alright. So we have our audio overview. So another thing I haven't tested, we'll see. If I change the output language back, we're gonna find out number one. I'm guessing the audio overview will be gone, but we'll see if all of our current notes that are in the middle of the chat are reset or not. So, let's first, I actually have to, remove this and re add it to, the stage, here as a tab. So hopefully, you all can hear, this audio overview in Spanish. So, let's go ahead and take a quick listen.

Jordan Wilson [00:33:18]:
Alright. I started it without actually sharing my tab. Here we go. Alright. Hey. Wiresharing audience, anyone anyone speak Spanish? Let me know. Is this is this it sounds so again, I I I I don't speak. I can understand, a little bit.

Jordan Wilson [00:33:42]:
It sounds like things are are going correctly here. And so one thing I noticed so far sounds great. Right? Again, not fluent. My my Spanish is extremely bad, but the, it sounds pretty on par. So, hey, Spanish speaking audience. Let me know. Did that sound pretty on par to you? One thing I noticed a couple of things. It doesn't look like the, the capabilities to join live is there when you're using a different language.

Jordan Wilson [00:34:37]:
So that's actually something, maybe it's only available right now in the English language, but you can actually talk, to the AI host and ask them questions, and they will respond to you and listen to you. So maybe that's not available as of yet. It doesn't look like it is. The other thing is normally there's two hosts that kind of banter with each other. So I'm gonna kinda click around here, see if we get the other host. Tokens. There we go. Wow.

Jordan Wilson [00:35:05]:
Okay. So we do get both hosts there. So it just it just took a while to get our second host in. So, there you go. Right away was able to create a customized, podcast for myself in Spanish. Alright. So I'm gonna go up to settings here. I'm gonna change the output language, back to, English, and then I'm going to refresh.

Jordan Wilson [00:35:32]:
I'm gonna refresh this page, and I'm curious. So now I'm just going to, type in the middle, and I'm gonna see if if if we're back in, English in the chat pane, which I do believe we should be. I'm just gonna say, you know, poet, I'm just gonna say explain what, Watson x is in one sentence. K. There we go. We should now be the default language. I just didn't know if you started something, in Spanish, if it was gonna stay in Spanish. It does not, So that part's working, as it probably should.

Jordan Wilson [00:36:09]:
And it says based on the sources provided, Watson x is IBM's overarching enterprise focused, artificial intelligence and data platform, and that is correct. There we go. Perfect. Alright. So, that is, we just saw, at least one of the new updates. And let me go over, actually two. So, one of the main ones on the show, one of the other kind of side ones. So another, cool one to to to look at here is there's this new discover, sources.

Jordan Wilson [00:36:39]:
So on the left hand tab in the sources, you can manually add sources one by one, or you can click this discover sources, which is kind of like, which is kind of like, traditional Google search, and then you can just choose. So, let's just say I'm gonna type in IBM, Watson x. Let's see. And then I'm gonna type in AI. I'm gonna click submit. And then it's gonna bring in, what it deems to be good sources that then I can automatically add those, versus, you know, manually searching and bringing them in. So, you know, people, I think, have mixed opinions on this. But, you know, as I scroll down here, so one thing I wish I wish that this was labeled and I could see the actual URL.

Jordan Wilson [00:37:27]:
Right. In some instances, I can, kind of make sense of of what's here. Right? So the second one says, you know, IBM, Watson x, Wikipedia. The first one just it doesn't say anything. So it's just pulling in what I believe would be a a title and maybe, the first part of a meta description. I would assume this is from IBM's website, but I don't know. So I would have to actually, click on it, and then I can see, yes. It is from, developer.ibm.com.

Jordan Wilson [00:37:58]:
Alright. So then you can import those sources either all at once or one by one. So let me just do that as an example. I'm gonna bring in the, IBM Watson x from Wikipedia. There we go. And then last but not least, I'm gonna go back over, to our, ChatGPT, one that went for went for twelve minutes. Alright? So I'm gonna get our, our research here. I'm gonna copy it, jump back in, to our NotebookLM, add this as a source, paste the text.

Jordan Wilson [00:38:36]:
Bam. Alright. So, we've kind of, done a little bit of everything except the one big thing, testing out the new model, which is Gemini 2.5 flash. It's a thinking model. So hopefully, this will make a little bit of sense here. So I'm going to, I'm going to ask it something maybe a little tricky. Alright. So I'm zooming in here.

Jordan Wilson [00:39:02]:
So I'm saying, please carefully analyze all of the source material. Actually, I'm gonna do two two kind of quick prompts here. So first, I'm saying, please analyze all of the source materials and give me a factual month by month breakdown of IBM's Watson x and Watson x AI updates from month to month starting in January 2025 and ending with May, or sorry, starting in January 2024 and ending with May 2025. So, yeah, unfortunately you kind of just get these three dots right now. Right? So if you're, you know, ever texting someone and you're waiting for them to text back, that's what you kind of get. So maybe in the future, I don't know. Maybe we'll get the chain of thought because I would really be interested to see how Gemini two point five is thinking, but only thinking in the confines of your data, which will be extremely fascinating for dorks like me. Right? I spend so much time, kind of read, reading either raw chain of thought or summarize chain of thought because I think it's, it's a it's really a cheat code if you wanna be better at large language models.

Jordan Wilson [00:40:02]:
So you'll see still, it's been about thirty seconds, forty seconds. So as it's going alright. It's done now. And here's a great breakdown. Okay? The good thing about using, the good thing about using NotebookLM, as you'll see on my screen for our livestream audience, it always sources things as well. Right? So I can click, on these different sources. So, as an example, let me go to something. So it says some Watson x AI updates for what month is this? January 2024.

Jordan Wilson [00:40:38]:
It says the auto AI feature was enhanced to support ordered data for all experiment types. And I can hover over that, and I can click that, and then it's gonna take me back to that source guide. So that is from the Grok Deep Research, and then it finds that exact, piece. And then, I can go and read more about that if I want to. Alright. So, as you'll see I mean, for our livestream audience, that's a lot there. That's a lot. Let me get back to our chat interface there.

Jordan Wilson [00:41:08]:
A lot of information month by month. So I'm gonna be reading this, tonight. Right? And probably creating a, just an audio overview based on this, and I'll probably have a conversation with it to help me better understand all of these things. But, you you know, one other thing is I wanted to test this out a little bit more. So I'm gonna say, you know, please, identify, underlying trends based solely on IBM's product roadmap and updates they made to the Watson x and Watson x AI platforms. Alright. So this is interesting. So I'm giving, this would have not worked, on Gemini two point o, something like this where you're, you're you're kind of calling on the model, to do something that a traditional large language model could not do very well.

Jordan Wilson [00:42:13]:
So, I I guess maybe on Gemini two point o, this may have worked. I didn't try this exact thing, but it's going to work much better on a thinking model. So it it it actually spit it out pretty quickly. And it said based on the updates and information provided of the sources for the IBM Watson x and Watson x AI platforms. Several underlying trends are evident in IBM's product roadmap. So it's kind of thinking, between the lines here. So it's saying, okay. Rapid and diverse foundation model evolution and expansion, strong emphasis on enterprise governance, trust and responsible AI, commitment to hybrid cloud, multi cloud, and global availability, etcetera.

Jordan Wilson [00:42:53]:
That's good. So now I'm gonna say, you know, please identify, any change in course, whether, overt or under the under the radar, that the IBM platform, went or sorry. That the IBM Watson x platform went through over the course of this period. And I'm gonna sync, you you know, I'm gonna say something like, you know, you know, please try and unearth, information, between the lines, you know, but keep it factual. Right? So, I'm I'm I'm I'm kind of having, in testing here, if Gemini 2.5 Flash is able to, really use this ability to now reason and to think about the information. Right? So I'm not just asking for factual recall. Alright. And as we wait here, think of how something like this could be extremely useful.

Jordan Wilson [00:44:01]:
Think. Let's say you have a a daily meeting. Right? Your team. You know, maybe you're remote, you're hybrid, and it's recorded every single day and you've been doing it for years. You could literally upload all of those transcripts or at least, you know, run a little automation that you could just batch convert them all, throw them into NotebookLM plus. You probably want the plus version for that. And then run a similar prompt. Say, hey, I'm the manager of this department.

Jordan Wilson [00:44:25]:
You know, here's our our our transcripts of this 10 person, meeting. You know, give me a performance report on, you know, John in marketing. You know, what are some things I'm missing in terms of his performance? You have our daily, you know, our daily meeting transcripts. What are things I'm missing? Where is he, you know, where is John excelling? Where is he struggling? What are projects he, commonly drops? What are projects he, you know, really knocks out very quickly? So, you know, even just having something like this that connects all of your data, but can use a little bit of reasoning and a little bit of logic very quickly, extremely powerful. So let's quickly look at the alright. Here we go. A great one right here. So the first thing that it found is that IBM went, it it shifted from a primarily IBM centric model offering to a broad, diverse, and open model ecosystem.

Jordan Wilson [00:45:20]:
So it said initially, IBM prominently featured its own Granite models. However, now there is a wide array of third party and open source models, including Meta's llama, Mistral models, and some others. So I obviously knew that. Right? But, if you didn't follow something like this very closely, and if you're just looking at information that companies put out, you know, sometimes they might not say, hey. We're shifting our strategy. Right? They just might put out new updates. You you know, obviously, I've been following that, but, you know, a pretty good example, and that's actually what I was hoping, because I know that it started with just granite models. And then, more recently in 2025, they've shifted, to, you know, include, some more access to open weight models, like the ones listed there.

Jordan Wilson [00:46:06]:
So I know this was a a a kind of a longer, version, but I wanted to do a couple of things. Number one, you all asked for this episode. You wanted to see what was new, inside of, NotebookLM. But I also wanted to give you kind of a practical example, because, you know, people are always asking me, hey, Jordan, how are you using AI? Or, you know, how can you stay up to date on all of these things? Well, I just gave you a little look into how I work, how I operate. Right? I use NotebookLM all the time. So generally, I do start with, multiple deep research tools. I'll throw them into NotebookLM. Sometimes I'll continue chatting, with those individual deep researches, but I'm probably gonna go in and have a conversation with this notebook, that I just made.

Jordan Wilson [00:46:50]:
I'm probably gonna listen to an audio overview and then ask questions, but it's a great way to learn. And now that, this is powered, by Gemini 2.5 flash, a thinking model, huge. Opens up access to 50, new, language output languages. Great. Both for text and for the audio overview as well as those two, not as new, but new ish, features, the discover sources and the mind maps. Again, I think NotebookLM is a tool you can't afford not to use. Alright. That is a wrap y'all.

Jordan Wilson [00:47:23]:
If you wanna know more on NotebookLM, I've done a couple of episodes. They were a little old, but if you wanna get the basics, go listen to episode three eighty three or three seventy where I covered NotebookLM in a lot more depth. We did some live demos there as well. Just know those are gonna be a little outdated by now. So just keep that in mind. So I hope this was helpful. Let me know in the comments, if it was, do you like these live ones? Are they, are they distracting? Right. It's it's it's one of the, like I said, the request that I get a lot is people just wanna know like, Hey, Jordan, how are you using AI? Can you do more demos? Like, I wanna practically see, but again, just I I encourage you to think of all the different ways that you can use this.

Jordan Wilson [00:48:05]:
Right? Whether you're using your company's own information that's publicly available, whether you're using, you know, uploading, you know, transcripts, I think is a great use case. Learning something new or if you just want to talk, to an AI in in in conversate, but based on your data or only based on the data that you provide, this is great. So again, you can't afford, I think, not to use NotebookLM, if I'm being honest. Alright. So if this was helpful, if you're listening on the podcast, please, please, please, Spotify changed some things. You know, if you wanna help more people, you know, learn AI, I'd really appreciate it. If you could leave us a, a review. Spotify kinda changed their algorithm, recently, so fewer people are hearing the Everyday AI Show.

Jordan Wilson [00:48:57]:
So if you are finding value, on the podcast or even on the live stream, if you could leave us a review, especially on Spotify, that would be great. We'd appreciate it. Yeah. Now, unfortunately, all the, the big tech conglomerates, podcasts are are getting, a little more shine. So, if you if if you enjoy the work, if it helps here, please, consider leaving us a review on Spotify. Share this on social media if this was helpful. And, more importantly, go to youreverydayai.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter, and make sure to join later today.

Jordan Wilson [00:49:29]:
I'm probably gonna throw a post out on LinkedIn, after the, the keynote here at IBM Think. I'm excited about this partnership with IBM, so make sure to tune in for that. So thank you for tuning in now. Make sure to join us tomorrow and every day for more everyday AI. Thanks, y'all.