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Google gives Gemini a boost in Sheets and a cool trick in NotebookLM

Working with Google Gemini in Sheets.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends

Google is expanding Gemini integration within its Workspace suite and has announced a couple of new tricks for its underrated NotebookLM tool. The first in line is the ability to create structured tables in Google Sheets with text prompts.

So far, all tables created by the AI were served in plain text with only bold highlights for the headers. Needless to say, they looked drab and boring, lacking any character at all. There was no text formatting or stylistic edits to the cell contents.

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Now, Google has updated the “Create a table” preset in the Gemini sidebar in Sheets. On tapping it, users can conveniently substitute the core input terms and get a structured table with colorful highlights, dropdown options, and shaded cells in a few seconds.

New structured table format in Google Sheets for Gemini.
Google

According to Google, the facility will be available to “Workspace customers with Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education, Education Premium add-ons and users with the Google One AI Premium subscription.”

It seems the rollout is focused on business and enterprise customers first. Presently, those with access to Gemini Advanced courtesy of a Google One AI Premium subscription may not yet be able to create structured tables in Google Sheets.

An underrated gem gets better

The more impressive set of updates has been reserved for NotebookLM, the AI-powered note-taking app that also doubles as a research assistant. It can now analyze YouTube videos using a simple URL copy-paste and break down the contents in whichever form you’d like to view them.

NotebookLM providing summary of YouTube videos.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends

You can further ask follow-up questions based on the topic-based breakdown offered by NotebookLM, complete with clickable links to the specific point in the video. After trying it on a few videos of varying durations, it seems to work flawlessly, even picking up details from the relatively shorter chapters in a YouTube video.

Another cool feature that will be immensely convenient for journalists, researchers, and students is the ability to search across an audio file’s transcription for specific information.

NotebookLM summary of a YouTube video.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends

Furthermore, NotebookLM has also gained the ability to transform audio recordings, handwritten notes, and lecture slides into study guides. Finally, we have a sharing update for Audio Overviews, which are essentially podcast-style audio versions of user-uploaded text files like PDFs.

Up until now, you could only generate these overviews with a single click. Now, they can also be shared directly using a custom URL. For folks seeking more versatility, they can also import Docs, Slides, and website links, or simply copy-paste text and get the analysis done by the underlying Gemini 1.5 model.

Nadeem Sarwar
Nadeem is a tech journalist who started reading about cool smartphone tech out of curiosity and soon started writing…
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Google is already incorporating its Gemini AI assistant into the rest of its product ecosystem to help individuals and businesses streamline their existing workflows. Now, the Silicon Valley titan is looking to bring AI into the classroom.
While we've already seen the damage that teens can do when given access to generative AI, Google argues that it is taking steps to ensure the technology is employed responsibly by students and academic faculty alike.
Following last year's initial rollout of a teen-safe version of Gemini for personal use, the company at the time decided to not enable the AI's use with school-issued accounts. That will change in the coming months as Google makes the AI available free of charge to students in over 100 countries though its Google Workspace for Education accounts and school-issued Chromebooks.
Teens that meet Google's minimum age requirements -- they have to be 13 or older in the U.S., 18 or over in the European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland, Canada, and the U.K. -- will be able to converse with Gemini as they would on their personal accounts. That includes access to features like Help me write, Help me read, generative AI backgrounds, and AI-powered noise cancellation. The company was quick to point out that no personal data from this program will be used to train AI models, and that school administrators will be granted admin access to implement or remove features as needed.
What's more, teens will be able to organize and track their homework assignments through Google Task and Calendar integrations as well as collaborate with their peers using Meet and Assignments.
Google Classroom will also integrate with the school's Student Information System (SIS), allowing educators to set up classes and import pertinent data such as student lists and grading settings. They'll also have access to an expanded Google for Education App Hub with 16 new app integrations including Kami, Quizizz, and Screencastify available at launch.
Students will also have access to the Read Along in Classroom feature, which provides them with real-time, AI-based reading help. Conversely, educators will receive feedback from the AI on the student's reading accuracy, speed, and comprehension.
In the coming months, Google also hopes to introduce the ability for teachers to generate personalized stories tailored to each student's specific education needs. The feature is currently available in English, with more than 800 books for teachers to choose from, though it will soon offer support for other languages, starting with Spanish.
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