Once you have uploaded your sources, you can ask the model questions about your source material or give the model instructions to perform actions.
You can use the checkbox on each source to include or exclude certain sources the model should use to answer your question in a notebook.
Citations
For most questions or instructions you give NotebookLM, the response will include one or multiple citations, a specific block of text from your source that is considered relevant to the question and was used by NotebookLM to build the response for you.
Citations are direct quotes, and seeing these passages can help you check the accuracy of the response and find the original quote. You can hover over a citation to see the complete text quoted. You can also click on any one citation to have the source viewer auto-scroll to the location of the quoted text in the sources.
A key feature of NotebookLM is that chat responses only use data from your sources, unless you explicitly ask the model to do something more creative (e.g. “rewrite the ending of my short story”). For this reason, you may receive the chat response “NotebookLM can’t answer this question. Try rephrasing it, or ask a different question.”
Suggested Actions
NotebookLM dynamically suggests actions based on what you selected.
- When you select a passage while reading a source, NotebookLM automatically offers to summarize the text in a new note, or help you understand technical language or complicated ideas
- While you’re writing a note, NotebookLM offers tools to polish or refine your prose, or suggest related ideas from your sources based on what you’ve just written
- When you select one or more notes, NotebookLM offers to combine your notes or create an outline based on the selected notes