Gemini Notebook Can Now Dig Into Books You Already Own

Google is letting you pull eligible ebooks you bought on Google Play Books straight into Gemini Notebook, the company said Thursday in a Google blog post announcing Expert Intelligence. Once a supported title is in a notebook, you can ask questions grounded in that book, generate quizzes and Audio Overviews, and mix the text with your own notes or files.

The launch covers more than 100,000 titles from publishers including Penguin Random House, Macmillan, O’Reilly Media, Bloomsbury, Johns Hopkins University Press, and De Gruyter Brill. Google also worked with more than 15 authors, including Michael Pollan, Steven Pinker, and Jennifer Wallace, on Featured Notebooks that add extra sources around their books.

You have to own the ebook through Play Books before Gemini Notebook will treat it as a live source, and if you share a notebook, collaborators need their own copy too. Eligible titles show Gemini Notebook under the Tools badge on the Play Books detail page. Google is also handing out a free starter book in the United States while supplies last, so that perk is not rolling out as a Canada giveaway, but Play Books owners here can still add eligible titles they already bought.

Expert Intelligence starts in Gemini Notebook and Google says it plans to bring the same idea to the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search, plus expand beyond books to things like textbooks and research reports. That sits next to the flight price tracking already live for Canadians in AI Mode and the Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash video controls that landed this morning, and it builds on the Notebooks feature Google folded into the Gemini app earlier this year so your research space is not stuck in a separate tool.

Check Play Books for the Gemini Notebook badge on titles you own, then add one into a notebook and ask it something you would normally flip pages for.