What Exactly is NotebookLM?

NotebookLM is Google’s experiment in blending note-taking with the power of AI. Powered by their Gemini models, it’s designed to help you:

• Upload sources like PDFs, Word docs, meeting notes, research papers, or even paste in large blocks of plain text, provide URLs for websites, and link YouTube videos.
• Ask contextual questions and get AI-generated answers grounded in your own content.
• Generate summaries of lengthy reports or regulatory updates.
• Create outlines and ideas based on the information you’ve provided.
• Listen to narrated overviews with its Audio and Video Overview feature, which gives you a podcast-style recap of your material—perfect for the drive to work or catching up before a meeting.
• Generate study guides that can help you learn and then test your knowledge on key points from your materials.
• Explore mind maps that let you visually navigate a topic and see connections in a way that’s intuitive and engaging.

Discover Sources

Another powerful capability is the Discover Sources feature. Instead of starting with documents you already have, you can type in a topic, and NotebookLM will locate an initial set of around 10 items on the web for you to review. From there, you can decide which ones to add into your Notebook. This is a great way to jump-start research, explore new areas, or expand your understanding of a subject before diving deeper.

And here’s where it gets even more exciting: Google has announced that NotebookLM will soon offer Flashcards. That means you’ll be able to not just summarize content, but also test your understanding and reinforce learning. It’s a smart way to make sure AI is helping bankers learn faster, not simply do the work for them.

Why Should Bankers Care?

Banking professionals deal with an avalanche of information every day. NotebookLM offers a way to cut through the noise, speed up prep time, and sharpen decision-making. More than that, it’s a tool that encourages understanding. Instead of flipping through hundreds of pages or struggling to connect dots across multiple reports, you can get to the insights faster—and then spend your energy on strategy and relationships.

Practical Use Cases in Banking

Here are just a few ways bankers might put NotebookLM to work:

• Board and Executive Prep: Summarize industry information and market trends into concise, easy-to-digest briefs that help board members and executives quickly grasp what’s taking place in the broader landscape. Pair that with an audio overview to review while you’re on the move.
• Regulatory Compliance: Upload new rules or regulatory updates and ask NotebookLM to highlight key changes or implications.
• Client Relationship Management: Pull together notes, proposals, and strategies into one place, then use NotebookLM to generate summaries and prep materials.
• Training & Development: Take advantage of the ability to generate a two-person audio overview podcast-like conversation about complex banking topics—perfect as a spark in staff and department meetings. In addition, use the upcoming Flashcard feature to reinforce knowledge from policies, reports, or even graduate banking school coursework.
• Strategic Planning: Import market research or competitive analysis and use AI to spark new product or growth ideas.

A Quick Note on Privacy & Security

This is important: NotebookLM does not use your uploaded content to train Google’s models. That’s good news. But, as with any AI platform, bankers should use caution when working with sensitive or personally identifiable information. Always perform due diligence and check with your institution’s compliance and IT teams before uploading any material. The safest approach is to start with non-sensitive documents—things like market research, educational content, or publicly available reports.

Challenges and Considerations

Like all AI tools, NotebookLM is evolving. New features are rolling out regularly, and while that’s exciting, it also means bankers need to stay alert. Any third-party platform should be vetted just like a new vendor, especially when it comes to data handling and security standards. And while AI can summarize and suggest, it can’t replace human oversight. In banking, trust is earned through accuracy, context, and judgment—all things AI can help support but not fully replicate.

Knowledge in Your Pocket: The NotebookLM Mobile App

One of the most exciting extensions of the platform is the NotebookLM mobile app. This puts the power of knowledge right in your pocket—literally. The app allows you to access your Notebooks anywhere, anytime, making it particularly valuable for busy banking professionals on the move.

If you’ve created an Audio Overview, you can load it into the app and effectively generate your own personalized podcast player of curated content. It’s like carrying around a custom knowledge stream built from the exact information you want to learn, putting the future of professional development in the palm of your hand.

Reports: Create and Customize

NotebookLM has also recently introduced a Reports section, providing users with even more ways to organize and present insights. With this feature, you can generate different types of reports from your sources—whether it’s a briefing doc, study guide, blog post, or even a strategic white paper. You can also create internal briefing memos, explanatory articles, or concept explainers.

This opens up an entirely new set of possibilities for bankers: from preparing client-ready insights to building educational content for staff training, to crafting polished strategy documents that can be shared with leadership teams.

Wrapping It Up

NotebookLM is an impressive step forward in how professionals interact with information. For bankers, it could mean less time wading through data and more time building relationships, making decisions, and serving clients. If you’re curious about AI but not sure where to start, this could be a safe sandbox to experiment in—one that’s built for learning, summarizing, and accelerating knowledge.

The future of banking will be shaped by how well we harness tools like this. NotebookLM isn’t about replacing the banker—it’s about empowering the banker to do what they do best, even better.

At WSI, we’re helping banking clients take the first step through our Preliminary AI Assessment process. It’s a practical way to evaluate your business challenges and explore how AI capabilities can be matched to real business needs. If you’d like to discover where AI could create the biggest impact for your institution, we’d love to start that conversation with you.