Google on April 29, 2025, widened NotebookLM’s reach by adding Audio Overviews in more than fifty languages — from Spanish and French to Hindi, Turkish, and Korean — following last year’s global rollout to over two hundred countries. This change allows researchers, students, and content creators to listen to AI-generated summaries of their own material rather than scanning text.
This just in... the @NotebookLM hosts have some rather exciting news they'd like to share with you all: pic.twitter.com/SSptNWtdqk
— NotebookLM (@NotebookLM) April 29, 2025
Audio Overviews distill any mix of documents, slides, web pages, or YouTube transcripts into a scripted back-and-forth between two synthetic hosts. Powered by Gemini, users can direct tone and depth through a prompt and then download an MP3 or keep playback inside the notebook. Earlier iterations spoke only English, so the current expansion rebuilds the speech stack and language detection while maintaining the one-click flow.
Early testers report that multilingual voices make long reading lists easier to digest on commutes and provide an alternative channel for blind or low-vision audiences. Accessibility advocates note that combined audio and synced transcripts help meet WCAG guidelines, though beta users still press for accent controls and higher voice fidelity.
NotebookLM, born in Google Labs in 2023 under the code-name Project Tailwind, has since gained Slides and fact-check helpers and now offers a paid Plus tier with five-times larger notebooks and more Audio Overviews. A Workspace-integrated business edition is slated for later this year. The group behind the tool says its aim is to turn reading lists into personal learning companions without sending data outside the user’s private corpus.
