Google’s Notebook AI Just Got Smarter — With Your Bookshelf

If you’ve ever wished your AI assistant could quote directly from a cookbook you own, or pull a specific argument from a biography sitting on your digital shelf, here’s the news you’ve been waiting for.

Google is rolling out a new capability for Gemini Notebook (the tool formerly known as NotebookLM) called Expert Intelligence. The name sounds fancy, but the idea is simple: instead of only drawing from documents you upload or pages you link, the AI can now tap into digital books you’ve actually purchased from the Google Play Books library.

That’s right — your personal library becomes a source. No more copy-pasting excerpts or hoping the AI finds a relevant PDF. If you own the book, you can cite it directly.

How Expert Intelligence Works in Practice

Let’s say you’re planning a week of dinners built entirely around chicken and spinach. Instead of scouring the web, you can ask Gemini to pull recipes from a Martha Stewart cookbook you own. The AI will search the text, pull relevant passages, and cite them as sources.

But it doesn’t stop at recipes. You can turn any owned book into a variety of formats:

• Infographics — visual summaries of key concepts from the book.
• Audio Overviews — listen to a conversational recap of the material.
• Quizzes — test your understanding based on the book’s content.

It’s a natural extension of what NotebookLM already does with uploaded sources, just with a much more curated pool of knowledge.

Not a Free-for-All: Sharing Has Limits

Here’s a catch that’s worth knowing before you get too excited. If you create a shared notebook and add a book as a source, your collaborators can’t just freeload off your purchase. They’ll need to own or buy their own copy of the book to fully use Expert Intelligence. Google’s being careful about copyright, and that’s probably wise.

Which Publishers Are On Board?

The feature launches with a solid lineup of major publishers. We’re talking Bloomsbury, De Gruyter Brill, Johns Hopkins University Press, Macmillan Publishers, O’Reilly Media, and Penguin Random House. All told, that’s over 100,000 titles available from day one.

That’s a big deal for students, researchers, and lifelong learners who already rely on NotebookLM for organizing their research.

Free Book Offer — But Act Fast

To kick things off, Google is giving away one free book to users in the US. The catch? It’s “while supplies last,” so you’ll want to check the app sooner rather than later if you’re interested.

It’s a smart marketing move, honestly. Get people hooked on the feature with a freebie, and they’ll likely buy more books to keep using it.

What About the Main Gemini App and Search?

Right now, Expert Intelligence is available only in the Gemini Notebook app and its web dashboard. But Google has confirmed it’s planning to bring the feature to the core Gemini app and AI mode in Search down the road.

That expansion could be huge. Imagine asking Gemini in Search to explain a concept “according to this book” and getting a cited answer pulled straight from the text. It’s a glimpse of where AI-assisted research is heading.

Featured Notebooks: Extra Insights from Authors

Beyond the book-citing feature, Google has partnered with a handful of authors to create Featured Notebooks. These offer additional insights that go beyond what’s in the book itself — think of them as bonus material, but integrated right into your research workflow.

It’s a nice touch that adds value for readers who want more context or behind-the-scenes thinking from the authors they admire.

Why This Matters for Your Research Workflow

If you’re already using NotebookLM for projects, this is a meaningful upgrade. You no longer have to juggle between your book library and your notes app. The books you own become part of your AI-powered research stack.

That said, it’s not a replacement for critical thinking. The AI is still pulling from what it finds, and you should always verify the context. But as a starting point for essays, reports, or even just personal learning, it’s a powerful tool.

For more on how to get the most out of Google’s AI tools, check out our guide on using NotebookLM for research and our rundown of Google AI features for productivity.

So, is Expert Intelligence worth trying? If you own books on Google Play Books and you’re already in the Notebook ecosystem, absolutely. Just remember to check the free book offer before it runs out.

Publishers take Anthropic to court over training data

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and a coalition of other music publishers have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic and its co-founders, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. The complaint, lodged late Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses the AI lab of running a “brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works.”

This is more than a routine licensing dispute. The publishers are alleging what they call “blatant theft” — that Anthropic used thousands of copyrighted songs, lyrics, and sheet music to train its Claude AI models without permission or payment.

Anthropic isn’t staying quiet. “We disagree with the publishers’ claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch in an emailed statement.

Not the first IP fight for Anthropic

This isn’t Anthropic’s first rodeo in court over intellectual property. Some of the same lawyers behind this case previously represented Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group in a January lawsuit. They also led the Bartz v. Anthropic case, where a group of authors accused the company of using copyrighted books to train Claude.

In the Bartz case, a judge ordered Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion. The ruling was nuanced: using copyrighted works to train AI was deemed legal, but obtaining that content through piracy was not. That distinction matters here.

What’s different this time?

The new lawsuit is notably broader than its predecessors. It accuses Anthropic of “flagrant piracy” through illegal torrenting to secure millions of copies of books — including works containing lyrics and sheet music. The publishers argue this wasn’t just a copyright gray area; it was outright theft on a massive scale.

Legal experts will likely debate whether this case breaks new ground or simply extends the arguments from Bartz. Either way, the music industry is clearly drawing a line in the sand.

Why the music industry is pushing back

For publishers, the stakes couldn’t be higher. If AI companies can freely train on copyrighted music without compensation, the value of their catalogs could plummet. Lyrics, after all, are the backbone of countless streaming services, karaoke apps, and print publications.

This lawsuit isn’t just about money. It’s about control — who gets to decide how creative works are used in the age of generative AI.

What happens next

Anthropic has vowed to fight the claims. The company’s defense will likely hinge on the same arguments that partially succeeded in Bartz: that training on copyrighted material is transformative and should be allowed under fair use.

But the piracy angle complicates things. Torrenting, even for AI training, carries a different legal weight than simply scraping publicly available data. If the publishers can prove Anthropic knowingly engaged in illegal downloads, the court may not be sympathetic.

This case is one to watch. It could set a precedent for how AI companies source their training data — and whether the music industry can demand a slice of the AI pie.

For more on how AI is reshaping creative industries, check out our piece on AI music generation copyright issues and how AI companies handle licensing disputes.

A warning that cuts across the industry

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and more than 100 other companies and organizations have issued a stark joint warning: AI-powered cyberattacks could become dramatically more widespread and sophisticated within months. The statement isn’t just another tech industry press release. It’s a coordinated alarm from the very companies building AI and the ones defending against its misuse.

The group is calling for a global push on cyber defense as more capable AI models make attacks easier to automate and harder to contain. Hospitals, water treatment plants, and internet infrastructure are among the systems it says could face greater risk if defenses don’t improve quickly enough.

This AI cyberattacks warning carries extra weight because it isn’t coming from one corner of the tech industry. AI developers, cybersecurity firms, and infrastructure companies are all backing the same basic message: defenders need to move now.

Why this warning is unusually broad

The companies involved sit on different sides of the cybersecurity problem. Some are building increasingly powerful AI systems, while others spend their time defending networks against attacks. That makes the warning harder to dismiss as one company pushing its preferred policy.

The coalition brings together organizations with very different commercial interests, yet they agree that existing defenses need to improve before AI gives attackers another advantage. Its recommendations include stronger baseline security standards and wider access to defensive AI, especially for organizations without large cybersecurity budgets.

Critical infrastructure gets particular attention. Failures there can quickly spill beyond a single organization, affecting entire communities or even national economies.

What defenders are being asked to do

The coalition wants governments and organizations to expand access to AI tools that can find vulnerabilities and speed up patching. Smaller institutions are a major concern because they may lack the staff or money to react quickly as attacks become more automated.

Software development is another weak point. The coalition is calling for tougher security standards around AI-generated code, since AI makes it easier for attackers to probe systems for weaknesses. The basic strategy is to give defenders stronger tools before offensive AI becomes widespread enough to put even more pressure on already strained security teams.

Key recommendations from the coalition

• Stronger baseline security standards across industries
• Wider access to defensive AI tools, especially for underfunded organizations
• Tougher security requirements for AI-generated code
• More investment in automated vulnerability detection and patching

For a deeper look at how AI is reshaping the threat landscape, check out AI-powered phishing attacks and cybersecurity automation trends.

Why the window may be short

AI doesn’t need to invent entirely new cyberattacks to make the situation worse. Helping attackers find existing vulnerabilities faster could be enough to make familiar security failures much more expensive. That still doesn’t turn every attack into an AI superweapon. Unpatched software and understaffed security teams remain ordinary problems, but automation can make exploiting them faster and easier to repeat.

The coalition wants organizations to strengthen those defenses now, before AI-powered attacks become commonplace. For anyone already struggling to keep systems patched and secure, waiting until attackers have better automation leaves even less room to catch up.

The message is clear: the time to prepare is now, not after the first major AI-driven breach makes headlines.