Google Notebook: Introducing lecture mode for long-form audio learning

The new feature delivers 30-minute, single-voice audio lectures designed for passive learning, in a calm tone and a hint of UK flair. Over the summer, Google's Notebook LM gained widespread attention for its uncanny ability to turn uploaded files into fully digital podcast-style conversations-complete with realistic voices casually discussing user-provided material. What really made it stand out, though, was the next step: letting users themselves join those conversations. Hearing humanlike voices discuss documents in such a convincing and unscripted way felt, as I described at the time, both impressive and uncanny.

Many users spent weeks playing with the tool and its ever-expanding capabilities. Well, just in time for the holiday season, Google Notebook added another major feature: Lecture mode. Different from the conversational podcast format, this new option creates a structured single-voice audio presentation modelled after a classic classroom lecture.

The users can choose between different lecture lengths: Short, Default, and Long; the latter will go for approximately 30 minutes.

Lecture mode would be the antithesis of interactive rather than immersion, per se. The voice is not to banter or engage in give-and-take; it is rather a measured and modulated tone that some listeners would find pedantic, others might describe as serene. The design suggests a passive rather than active form of engagement.

Coupled with Lecture mode itself, reports say Google is going to add an extra flourish: an option for a British accent with the voice of the lecture. Coverage of the planned expansion points to a post on X from Notebook team members teasing the feature by suggesting that users would be "absolutely chuffed" by the result.

For many listeners, a British-accented narrator carries a certain association with authority and composure. Paired with the lecture format, the dropped "r"s and measured delivery may give the audio a tone that feels particularly academic or commanding, even when the subject matter is drawn directly from a user's own notes. Taken together, the lecture mode and the suggested British-accented delivery signal a subtle but significant evolution of Google Notebook: what started out as an interactive, almost playful experiment with AI voices is getting closer to a digital schoolmaster-patient, methodical, and ready to talk at length, whether at a desk, on a train, or quietly in the background.