Google Gemini Notebook Adds Support for Play Books Titles

Google has integrated its Gemini Notebook AI with Google Play Books, allowing users to import purchased titles to generate summaries, study plans, and infographics directly from their personal libraries. The move marks a significant shift in how AI platforms interact with copyrighted material, moving from broad training data to a model that leverages specific, user-owned content.

Integrating copyrighted content

The new "Expert Intelligence" feature enables users to add select ebooks purchased through Google Play Books as sources within a notebook [3]. By doing so, the AI can answer questions, compare arguments across multiple texts, and create structured outputs like audio overviews or infographics based on the book’s content [2]. Google has secured support from major publishers, including Penguin Random House, Macmillan Publishers, and O’Reilly Media, to make more than 100,000 titles available for this analysis [1].

To address potential copyright concerns, Google has implemented access controls that prevent users from viewing the full text of books they have not purchased [1]. If a user shares a notebook containing a purchased title, recipients who do not own the book will see it listed as a source but will be unable to access the content, with a link provided to purchase the title on Google Play Books [1]. This approach contrasts with the broader, often contentious, practice of using copyrighted works to train large language models without explicit authorization [2].

Market and legal implications

The integration arrives as Google faces a class-action lawsuit filed in July by an alliance of authors and publishers alleging that Google Play Books titles were used to train AI models without consent [2]. By partnering with 15 authors—including Michael Pollan and Steven Pinker—to create "Featured Notebooks," Google is attempting to establish a framework where authors and publishers can authorize the use of their work in AI-assisted research environments [1].

While the feature currently focuses on nonfiction and technical texts, Google plans to expand support to include scholarly articles, magazines, and newspapers [1]. The company also intends to bring these capabilities to AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app, further embedding the ability to synthesize personal libraries into its broader AI ecosystem [1].

What to watch

• Expansion of content types: Monitor the rollout of support for scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers, which Google has identified as the next phase for Expert Intelligence [1].
• Legal developments: Observe how the ongoing class-action lawsuit regarding AI training data influences future licensing agreements between Google and major publishing houses [2].
• Platform integration: Track the deployment of these book-analysis capabilities into the main Gemini app and AI Mode in Search, which will broaden the utility of these personal knowledge banks [1].

The success of this feature hinges on whether Google can scale its catalog of supported titles while maintaining the trust of publishers who remain wary of how their intellectual property is processed by AI. For users, the tool shifts the AI from a general-purpose chatbot to a specialized research assistant, though the accuracy of its summaries remains dependent on the quality of the source material and the user’s ability to verify claims against the original text [3].