Google integrates Gemini and NotebookLM to rethink its AI assistant experience

Tuesday 14 - 12:00

As the technology industry prepares for Google I/O 2026, Google is gradually unveiling new developments aimed at reshaping its artificial intelligence ecosystem, particularly the way users interact with its assistant tools.

One of the most significant updates concerns Gemini, which will now integrate “projects” through a new system based on notebooks powered by NotebookLM. This change aims to address long-standing user feedback regarding the lack of structured organization within conversations.

Until now, Gemini users had limited options to organize interactions, relying mainly on pinned chats or simplified workarounds. Competing AI tools already offer more advanced project-based structures, allowing users to group conversations, files, and instructions in a single workspace.

With this update, Google introduces a more coherent system where users can create notebooks that function as persistent AI environments. These notebooks allow the integration of multiple sources, including documents, PDFs, and web links, enabling the assistant to maintain context across interactions.

Each project can store up to 100 sources, and users can define global instructions that influence the behavior of the AI throughout the entire notebook. This makes it possible to tailor tone, role, and response style consistently across all interactions within a project.

Despite this convergence, Google has confirmed that NotebookLM will continue to exist as a separate product. The platform will retain its advanced features, such as document synthesis tools and audio or podcast-style content generation, while sharing underlying capabilities with Gemini’s new notebook system.

Industry observers see this move as part of Google’s broader strategy to unify its AI ecosystem and strengthen competitiveness in the rapidly evolving generative AI market, where organization, memory, and context management have become key differentiators.