Google’s NotebookLM is getting a facelift. A leaked APK teardown has exposed a batch of unreleased features — customizable AI avatars, creator descriptions, and notebook-level branding tools — that suggest Google is positioning its AI notebook product less as a research tool and more as a content platform. The question for anyone watching this space: is this a meaningful product evolution, or just cosmetic layering on top of a tool still searching for its core audience?
Android Authority broke the story after an APK teardown of the latest NotebookLM app version revealed strings of code referencing avatar customization, the ability for creators to add descriptions to their notebooks, and tools for adjusting the visual identity of shared notebooks. The code references are specific: users will apparently be able to customize avatar appearance for the AI-generated audio hosts that power NotebookLM’s “Audio Overview” feature, which turns uploaded documents into podcast-style conversations between two AI voices.
That Audio Overview feature has been NotebookLM’s breakout hit. Google launched it in late 2024, and it quickly became the product’s most talked-about capability. The appeal is obvious — upload a dense PDF, get back a listenable discussion that covers the key points. It went viral on social media. Google noticed.
So now they’re doubling down. The leaked code suggests creators will be able to shape how their AI hosts look, presumably for video or visual podcast formats. There are also references to adding a “creator description” to notebooks, which hints at a distribution model where notebooks aren’t just personal research tools but shareable, branded content products. Think of it as Google trying to build a creator layer on top of what started as a Gemini-powered note-taking app.
Here’s where skepticism is warranted.
NotebookLM has roughly 11 million monthly users as of early 2025, according to estimates cited by The Verge when Google launched NotebookLM Plus, its paid tier, in December 2024. That’s respectable but not massive for a Google product with significant promotional support. For comparison, ChatGPT crossed 100 million weekly active users by early 2024, per OpenAI’s own disclosures. NotebookLM occupies a niche — a useful one, but a niche nonetheless.
The pivot toward creator tools raises a strategic question Google hasn’t clearly answered: who is this for? Researchers who want to summarize papers? Podcasters who want AI-generated content? Educators building course materials? Brand marketers? The feature set is expanding in multiple directions simultaneously, which often signals a product team that hasn’t locked in on a primary use case.
Avatar customization is a telling addition. It implies Google sees a future where NotebookLM-generated audio (and possibly video) content is published and consumed at scale, not just used privately. But the AI podcast format has real limitations. The conversations are synthetic. They lack genuine expertise, spontaneous insight, or the kind of adversarial questioning that makes real podcasts valuable. They’re summaries dressed up as dialogue. Good for getting the gist of a 50-page report. Not a replacement for actual analysis.
And the creator description feature? It borrows from the YouTube playbook — give creators identity tools, build a distribution graph, monetize later. Google has done this before. Successfully, in YouTube’s case. But NotebookLM isn’t YouTube. It doesn’t have a consumption habit built around it. People don’t open NotebookLM to browse. They open it to process specific documents. Grafting a creator economy onto that behavior is ambitious. Maybe too ambitious at this stage.
There’s also the competitive picture. OpenAI has been aggressively expanding ChatGPT’s capabilities, including document analysis, voice interaction, and memory features that overlap with NotebookLM’s core value proposition. Anthropic’s Claude offers strong document processing with large context windows. Microsoft’s Copilot is embedded directly in Office, where most knowledge workers already live. NotebookLM’s differentiator — the audio summary — is clever but easily replicable. OpenAI could ship something similar in weeks if it chose to.
Google seems aware of this vulnerability. The NotebookLM Plus tier, priced at $20/month as part of the Google One AI Premium plan, added higher usage limits and business features. The leaked creator tools suggest a further push to make the product stickier by building community and identity around it. Reasonable strategy. But strategy and execution are different things.
What the leak doesn’t reveal is equally important. There’s no indication of improved source verification, better citation accuracy, or more transparent AI reasoning in the generated content. These are the features that would matter most to the researchers and professionals who represent NotebookLM’s most valuable user base. Customizable avatars are nice. Knowing whether the AI accurately represented a source document’s conclusions is essential.
The broader pattern here is familiar. Google launches a technically impressive AI feature, it generates buzz, and then the product team scrambles to build a business model around it before the novelty fades. Google Bard became Gemini. Gemini got embedded everywhere. NotebookLM got Audio Overviews. Now Audio Overviews are getting avatars and creator profiles. Each step adds complexity without necessarily adding depth.
None of this means NotebookLM is a bad product. It isn’t. For specific tasks — summarizing long documents, generating study guides, creating quick audio briefings — it works well. The underlying Gemini models are capable. But the leaked features suggest Google is trying to turn a solid utility into a platform, and that’s a much harder problem. Platforms need network effects, habitual usage, and a reason for creators to invest time building on them. NotebookLM hasn’t demonstrated any of those yet.
The real test won’t be whether Google ships these features. It will be whether anyone uses them consistently three months later. History suggests caution. Google’s graveyard of abandoned products and features is extensive, and AI tools are particularly susceptible to hype cycles that peak early and decline fast. For now, the avatar customization leak is interesting. But interesting and important aren’t the same thing.
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