If you've ever had to turn dense research or hurried notes into a clear presentation, you know how tedious it can be. NotebookLM now includes powerful Slide Decks driven by Nano Banana Pro and the creative agents of Gemini, and that changes the flow: from research to design in one place, even on mobile.
What the update brings and why it matters
NotebookLM combines an image model (Nano Banana Pro) with creative agents that automate design and storytelling steps. Technically, this means a multimodal pipeline where text understanding and visual generation work together to produce slides, infographics, and storybooks with visual and narrative coherence.
In practice: you no longer need to spend hours moving between researching, summarizing, designing, and tweaking. You give the system the sources, ask for a format and style, and you get a professional draft you can iterate on.
1 Convert deep research into slides
Use Deep Research so NotebookLM extracts, connects ideas, and generates visual metaphors. Ideal when you're working with long reports or papers.
- How: run
Deep Researchover your sources and ask for a deck in the format you want. - Tech tip: request speaker notes and a summary slide for each section to make later editing easier.
Example prompt: New Year celebrations around the world. Blend magical, whimsical elements with celebratory festival scenes. Respect local architecture and style.
2 Generate slides from rough notes
Do you have a draft in Google Slides, a text document, or even handwritten notes? Upload them. NotebookLM can recognize the content and transform that chaos into a visually coherent deck.
- Accepts photos of handwritten notes: it uses OCR and context extraction.
- Tip: if you're in a rush, ask for a theme (for example, 'Christmas-themed') to get an aesthetic ready to present.
Prompt example: Make the slides much more pretty and fun, Christmas-themed
3 Visual brainstorming: prototype ideas fast
Use Slide Decks to explore concepts: pitch decks, sequels, campaigns. The flow is ideal for testing several creative directions without investing much time in design.
- Take advantage of Notebooks with already organized content to generate ideas fed by real context.
Prompt example: Briefly list any Christmas or New Year’s events mentioned in the novels. Provide three novella concepts based on these mentions. For each, outline the plot and its connection to the original book.
4 Refine presentations with brand identity
Attach your brandbook and ask the deck to match color guidelines, typography, and logo usage. NotebookLM applies visual rules so the result meets corporate standards.
- Specify variables: palette in hex, fonts and sizes, photographic tone.
- Practical tip: ask for versions for screen and for print if you're going to distribute it.
Prompt example: Create a branded deck summarizing 2025 launches. Use the brandbook for branding and styling references
5 Illustrate complex concepts with visualizations
If you work with data, ask for infographics. Gemini and Nano Banana Pro can turn numbers into visual metaphors that help understanding without sacrificing accuracy.
- Ask for real-world comparisons (for example, "equivalent to X football stadiums") to make the data tangible.
- Define style: white background, sober palette, simple iconography.
Prompt example: Sleek design, white background. Visualise the numbers in the deck in a range of different ways that relate to the real world, use an infographic style with hard hitting and inspirational figures.
6 Turn long content into a visual storybook
Transform articles, chapters, or books into visual narratives: comic-style pages, storybooks, or magazine-like layouts. Great for educational materials or executive summaries.
- Keep control over sequence: ask for indexes, chapters, and captions.
- Tip: to reproduce complex styles, attach visual examples as references.
Prompt example: Find similarities between holiday recipes in 19th and 21st century. White background, black text, explained with manga on every page, modern Japanese manga.
7 From photos to a recipe book: capture and automate
Take photos of your preparations and NotebookLM can extract ingredients, steps, and turn them into a recipe book with images and a professional layout.
- Uses: FOODTECH products, process documentation, quick ebook creation.
- Tip: also upload textual notes to improve accuracy of ingredients and timings.
Prompt example: Holiday themed overview of all the sweets baked from the pictures. Reference the recipe from the note.
8 Sketch plans in the style you prefer
Define any visual style — blackboard, minimalist, dark — and ask the deck to be generated in that aesthetic. It's especially useful for strategy sessions, classes, or workshops.
Prompt example: Create a deep green "blackboard" design using white, yellow, and pink handwritten chalk text to help organize New Year’s resolutions.
Technical aspects and recommendations for advanced users
- Limits and subscriptions: Slide Decks are available for users 18+. There are two length/format options; the
AI Ultrasubscription doubles generation limits. - How it works under the hood:
Nano Banana Proacts as the visual engine (a multimodal image model), while the creative agents orchestrate prompts, templates, and iterative generation. - Best practices: attach sources to cite, ask for speaker notes and editable versions (for example, export to Google Slides) to keep traceability.
- Privacy and verification: although the system synthesizes content, verify critical data and check image rights before publishing.
Quick list to get started:
- Define the objective and audience.
- Attach sources and visual examples.
- Specify style and format (palette, typography, slide size).
- Iterate: ask for variants and versions with speaker notes.
- Export and tweak in your editor of choice.
So what's next? Try it with some research you have pending or those notes gathering dust on your desk. You'll see how the process of creating presentations goes from a bottleneck to a fast, controlled creative stage.
Original source
https://blog.google/technology/google-labs/8-ways-to-make-the-most-out-of-slide-decks-in-notebooklm