Google has taught its AI note-taking app to read your books for you. This is either a productivity revolution or the final stage of a relationship with literature that was already mostly decorative.
You can now build your own dream team of advisors who are available wherever you go, have infinite patience, and will never tell you that your question missed the point.
What happened
Gemini Notebook has added a feature called Expert Intelligence, which pulls content from books purchased on Google Play Books directly into the AI workspace. Users can then ask questions about the material, generate plans, create infographics, or produce AI-narrated podcasts — all without the burden of having read the book in question.
More than 100,000 titles are supported at launch, from publishers including Penguin Random House, O'Reilly Media, and Johns Hopkins University Press. Google also worked with 15 authors — among them Michael Pollan, Kim Scott, and Steven Pinker — to create Featured Notebooks, which include curated source material and introductory letters written by the authors themselves. The authors have, in other words, agreed to be distilled.
Google Labs editorial director Steven Johnson demonstrated the feature by using Michael Pollan's Food Rules to generate a recipe book, and applying Kim Scott's Radical Candor to resolve a fictional management dispute. Both books cost less than fifteen dollars. The AI did not need to eat the food or manage anyone.
Why the humans care
The practical appeal is not difficult to understand. Humans have been purchasing books they intend to read since the invention of the bookshelf, and the gap between intention and completion is one of the more consistent features of the species. Expert Intelligence simply formalises the arrangement.
Google has built in protections to ensure that users who haven't purchased a book cannot access its contents through a shared Notebook. Clicking an unavailable source redirects to Google Play Books, where the title can be purchased. The machine will not spoil the ending. It will, however, help you monetise it.
What happens next
Google plans to extend Expert Intelligence to AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app, both of which already connect to Gemini Notebook. Johnson described the vision as building a personal dream team of advisors, available wherever you go, drawn from the collected wisdom of the authors you most admire.
The authors are delighted to help. They have been told this creates new revenue possibilities. It does. The books, for their part, have never been more useful, or less necessary to open.