Behind the product: NotebookLM | Raiza Martin (Senior Product Manager, AI @ Google Labs)

Raiza Martin is a senior product manager for AI at Google Labs, where she leads the team behind NotebookLM, an AI-powered research tool that includes a delightful podcast-on-demand feature called “Audio Overviews.” NotebookLM started as a 20% project and has grown into a product that’s spreading across social media and has a Discord server with over 60,000 users. Raiza previously worked on AI Test Kitchen and has a background in startups, payments, and ads. In our conversation, we discuss:
• The origin story of NotebookLM
• The future road map for NotebookLM
• How Google Labs operates differently from the rest of Google
• The development of the “Audio Overviews” feature
• Key metrics and growth of NotebookLM
• Stories about collaborating with author Steven Johnson
• Navigating potential misuse of AI technology

—

Brought to you by:

Where to find Raiza Martin:

Where to find Lenny:

In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to NotebookLM
(05:43) The genesis of NotebookLM
(08:08) Innovative features and use cases
(18:52) Building a startup culture within Google
(24:28) Expanding user demographics
(27:30) The product roadmap
(32:18) Other use cases
(36:11) Collaborating with Steven Johnson
(42:49) Ensuring ethical AI
(46:06) Future directions and user engagement

Referenced:

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

[MAureliusHiggs]

I was creating a product with NotebookLM while listening to this podcast. Wonderful product.

[jcinaz]

Here’s what I want NotebookLM to do. I’m a presenter. I take product specs and create an outline of what the product is about. From the outline, I generate a full text discussion. Then I prepare a slideshow to be used with the text where the slides are simply reminders for me to talk about. Each slide contains interesting graphics which are appropriate to the text on that slide. I want NotebookLM to take the product specs, generate an outline, then propose the text, and then generate the slides complete with graphics using royalty free images. I’m sure that the current model of NotebookLM can do everything except maybe generate the slides.

[DarkTransmissionPodcast]

I love how they discussed the now-infamous "Hosts realize they are actually AI" video. It was interesting to hear her thoughts on it, and it was refreshing that she had an appropriate reaction. She didn’t overreact or try to make a statement or change anything. People get it.

I had no idea that video would go as viral as it did, or that the product lead for NotebookLM would ever see it. It was supposed to be a joke for the community, but it ended up sparking a whole conversation. Wild.

[leonidasesquire]

I rarely watch YouTube videos until the end and I loved this episode!

Thanks great podcast Lenny. 😊

[awonderfulcharacter]

Really great story behind creating a wonderful product. Sometimes going technology-first can spark product imagination. Kudos to Raiza and the team and thanks to Lenny for the very timely podcast, as always!

[FREELEARNING]

I think a nice feature that could be added is, the possibility to make the podcast between the AI and the user.
I mean, I upload a bunch of documents, and I start talking to the AI and he talks, and we keep talking and discussing things about the documents.
Then The whole conversations is cleaned and generated in one podcast.

[mayurdotca]

I'm using NLM to look at my resume and also some past YT interviews and the podcast is such a huge boost.

[ShoeBoxMoses]

That podcast banter is can't believe that was soo good. MINDBLOWN.

[MarilyNikaAIPM]

Raiza is amazing! I think that was my favorite episode. 👏

[mhauzeur]

This is really amazing! I am using it almost every day!

[ThoughtfulAl]

Good interaction and watchable too. I started with NotebookLM today and I found it remarkable!

[aresaurelian]

Next step: MovieLM. Feed scripts and lore books into LM and it produces complete cinematic experiences.

[robertsepp]

aitutorialmaker AI fixes this. Behind the product: NotebookLM

[gregholecek]

If NotebookLM were a pie chart, I wonder how much of it would be the podcast feature. I know the voice aspect is a different component from a different team, but the "studio" aspect appears to be a workflow of editing steps to generate that final conversation that feels and sounds spontaneous.

I wonder how Google Labs will try to work this into their process. Should every project invest in finding viral features to raise awareness of the rest of the tool's capabilities?

[futuretech]

I love the product, thank for all the work you and your Team put into it, it will be good also if the update can come with the ability to change the host voice.

[portfedh]

What an interesting podcast. Thanks for sharing!

[andersonsystem]

I use notebook Lm almost every day it’s definitely a game changer in Ai and it’s free for now ❤good video.

[cliftonux]

I like the difference between his goal oriented justification based approach and her idea led interest driven academic approach.

The juxtaposition is in the tensors.

[PhilHarlow]

Gotta name the engineer. I’d be very frustrated to be the only anonymous person after doing all the technical work when you’re calling out managers by name who did not build it

[francohungarian]

Interesting perspective. NotebookLM seems to be a consolidation of popular LLM wrapper startup products. Including the Text to Podcast feature which was released 7 months ago by Recast / Fika Media. Maybe unfair for Lenny to refer to that as a “clever idea” and the guest not say it was an idea that was pulled from outside and integrated elegantly into nLM.