Two New AI Tools Now Available: Google Gemini and NotebookLM

More AI tools and information available on our new AI webpage.

Google Gemini offers a versatile AI assistant capable of supporting a wide range of activities, from drafting communications and brainstorming project ideas to summarizing complex information and aiding in preliminary research.

NotebookLM provides an intelligent workspace for engaging with documents. It allows you to upload and analyze research papers, meeting transcripts, and other textual data, extracting key insights, answering specific questions, and identifying relevant connections with remarkable efficiency.
We encourage you to explore the potential of Gemini and NotebookLM to streamline your workflows, foster deeper engagement with your materials, and unlock new possibilities in your respective roles. Resources and training materials will be made available on the university's technology support portal to assist you in integrating these tools into your daily practices. We believe that these AI assistants can serve as valuable partners in advancing the academic and administrative missions of our institution.

Google Gemini:

Gemini is a powerful AI assistant designed to enhance productivity and creativity. It offers a range of features that can assist users in numerous tasks, helping them save time and improve the quality of their work.  

Gemini App:

• Brainstorm Ideas: Use the Gemini app as a thought partner to generate new ideas and explore different perspectives.  
• Summarize Complex Topics: Get quick, easy-to-understand summaries of intricate subjects.  
• Create First Drafts: Generate initial drafts of various content types, like outlines, emails, and blog posts.  
• Deep Research: With Gemini Advanced, you can explore complex topics and get comprehensive, easy-to-read reports by analyzing vast amounts of information from the web.  
• Custom Gems: Build specialized AI agents to help with repetitive or specialized tasks.  

Benefits of using Gemini: 

• Improved Quality: Gemini can help refine your writing, design better presentations, and analyze data more effectively, leading to higher-quality outputs. 75% of daily users report improved work quality.  
• Stimulated Creativity: Gemini can help you brainstorm ideas and generate creative content, overcoming writer's block and inspiring new approaches.  
• Time Savings: Quickly summarize information and draft content allowing you to focus on more critical activities.  
• Enterprise-Grade Security and Privacy: Google emphasizes that your data remains your own, is not used to train Gemini models without permission, and benefits from the robust security and compliance standards of Google Workspace.  

Notebook LM:

NotebookLM is an AI-powered research and writing assistant integrated into Google Workspace. Think of it as your intelligent research partner, helping you work more effectively with your documents and information.  

Here's a breakdown of what NotebookLM does:

• Connects to Your Documents: You upload your research materials, such as Google Docs, PDFs, text files, and even Google Slides. NotebookLM then uses AI to understand the content within these sources.  
• Provides Contextual Answers: Instead of just searching for keywords, you can ask NotebookLM specific questions about your documents, and it will provide answers based on the context of your uploaded materials. This is much more insightful than a traditional search. For example, if you upload a research paper, you can ask, "What were the main findings of this study?" and NotebookLM will synthesize the answer from the paper itself.  
• Generates Summaries: NotebookLM can automatically create concise summaries of your documents or even multiple documents at once, saving you significant reading time.  
• Helps You Brainstorm and Develop Ideas: You can ask NotebookLM to help you brainstorm related topics, identify key themes, or even suggest different angles for your writing based on your research.  
• Assists with Outlining and Structuring: If you're writing a paper or report, NotebookLM can help you create an outline based on your source material, suggesting a logical flow and identifying key sections.  
• Facilitates Citations (in development): While not fully rolled out yet, NotebookLM aims to help you track and generate citations based on your sources, making the research and writing process more seamless.  
• Acts as a Personalized Knowledge Base: As you upload more documents, NotebookLM becomes a personalized knowledge base that you can query and interact with to extract information and insights from your own collection of resources.
• Offers Different "Notebooks" for Different Projects: You can create separate notebooks for different projects or areas of research, keeping your sources and AI interactions organized.
• Generates Drafts and Rewrites: Based on your understanding of the source material facilitated by NotebookLM, it can also help you draft sections of text or rewrite existing content.  

In essence, NotebookLM aims to:

    •    Deepen your understanding of your own documents.  
    •    Accelerate your research process.  
    •    Streamline your writing workflow.
    •    Help you extract key insights and connections from your information.

It's designed to be a powerful tool for anyone who works with a lot of documents, whether you're a student, researcher, writer, or professional. By leveraging AI, NotebookLM helps you move beyond simple document storage and searching to a more interactive and insightful way of working with your knowledge.
 

**Written with assistance from Google Gemini**