Gemini Notebook can now import purchased Play Books titles for AI-powered Q&A

Gemini Notebook learns to read your library

Google's AI note-taking app, Gemini Notebook, can now import titles purchased from Google Play Books, turning a personal library into queryable material for an AI assistant. According to The Verge, the capability arrives through a new feature called Expert Intelligence, which supports asking questions about a book's contents as well as generating plans, infographics, AI podcasts and more from them.

At a briefing with The Verge, Google Labs editorial director Steven Johnson demonstrated the tool in action. In one example, he used the contents of Michael Pollan's Food Rules to produce a recipe book. In another, Gemini Notebook drew on Kim Scott's management book Radical Candor to answer a question about handling a difficult conversation with an employee. Users can also read the full text of an imported book directly inside the app.

A large launch catalogue and author-built notebooks

The feature starts with support for more than 100,000 books from publishers including Penguin Random House, Johns Hopkins University Press, Macmillan Publishers and O'Reilly Media. Google also worked with 15 authors — among them Pollan, Scott, Steven Pinker and Jennifer Wallace — on "Featured Notebooks" that each author customizes with additional source material, introductory letters and other extras. Eligible titles can be identified in Google Play Books by a "Gemini Notebook" label under the "Tools" badge.

Johnson described the broader ambition as assembling a personal bench of trusted voices: building a collection of people whose work you value, creating what he called "your own dream team of advisors that are just available to you wherever you go."

Sharing without giving away the book

Google has built in protections designed to keep imported books from circulating beyond people who have paid for them. If a user shares a notebook that includes a purchased title, recipients who do not own the book will still see it listed as a source, but they cannot view the full text or the information derived from it. Clicking the source instead directs them to Google Play Books, where they can buy a copy.

Johnson told The Verge that the aim is to let users bring in whatever expertise matters to them while opening new revenue possibilities for authors and publishers — a framing that positions the feature as a licensing-friendly channel rather than a way around buying books.

Headed for Search and the Gemini app

The feature is not meant to stay confined to the note-taking app. According to The Verge, Google plans to eventually bring Expert Intelligence to AI Mode in Search and to the Gemini app, both of which can already pull information from Gemini Notebook. Johnson also said the company intends to expand the supported source types to scholarly articles, magazine articles and newspapers.

Why it matters

This is a notable expansion of what AI note-taking tools are for: instead of working only with documents a user uploads, Gemini Notebook can now act on licensed, copyrighted commercial books — with publisher participation and purchase enforcement baked in. For readers, purchased titles become interactive reference material rather than static text. For authors and publishers, it offers a new engagement and sales channel, since non-owners who encounter a book through a shared notebook are routed to the store. It also signals how Google intends to connect its AI surfaces: content and expertise brought into Gemini Notebook could eventually surface in Search's AI Mode and the Gemini app, making Notebook a hub for personal, licensed knowledge rather than a standalone product.