For the longest time, the only browsers you'd really hear people talk about were Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, maybe even Microsoft Edge. While new browsers popped up sporadically, either a very small (and silent) pool of people would use them, or they just wouldn’t gain enough traction to make a real dent in anyone’s routine. With AI browsers now in the game like Perplexity's Comet, Opera's Neon, Norton's Neo, and one you've surely heard of, OpenAI's Atlas, this seems to have finally changed this year.

While it’s debatable if people have actually switched to AI browsers from the ones I just mentioned, they've been hyped up enough to make people genuinely curious and give them a shot to at least see what the fuss is about. Although I acknowledge the risks that come with AI browsers, I'm among the people who have made AI browsers my default and a regular part of my workflow. One tool I use a lot is Google’s NotebookLM, and it’s quickly become the perfect companion to an AI browser.

An AI browser brings the outside world to NotebookLM

Outside world, inside NotebookLM...sort of

The entire point of NotebookLM is to help you work with sources you upload. When Google Labs announced it, the company explained they wanted to build a tool that paired LLM models with its content. The aim was to help users "gain critical insights, faster." NotebookLM does exactly this by grounding the AI model in the sources you add, creating a personalized and private AI model that is only familiar with the information you feed it.

Ultimately, it can only answer questions whose answers it can find in the sources you’ve provided. If it can't find it explicitly mentioned, NotebookLM will simply tell you that without trying to make up an answer or searching the web. This grounded approach is incredible and the main reason I find NotebookLM so invaluable for my studies and work research. However, there are times when I ask NotebookLM something related to the sources I uploaded and the tool can't provide a proper explanation because what I asked wasn't explicitly covered in the content I added.

This isn't NotebookLM's fault in any way and is completely mine, since I automatically assume the source I uploaded will cover everything I need. For instance, if I upload an article to NotebookLM that mentions the word XDA and decide to ask it something about XDA, it'll only be able to tell me the context in which XDA was mentioned in the source. It can't tell me anything more than that, since what I provided it with is all it knows.

In these situations, I need to open a new tab and search for the information online. While this takes mere seconds, switching tabs and sorting through search results interrupts focus and breaks the flow of my work. This is where an AI browser comes in. Every AI browser I've gone hands-on with comes with an AI chatbot you can access at any time in the form of a side panel. This allows you to get answers instantly without leaving your current page.

This is perfect in the situation I just described. It helps you retain NotebookLM's source context while still getting the additional information you need from the outside world, without interrupting your workflow. The best part about AI browsers is that none of the features are forced upon you. You can use the side panel when you need it and simply ignore it when you don’t. Given that I get distracted very easily and end up watching YouTube shorts when I want to search a simple query, having an AI chatbot in the sidebar is the best way to keep me focused.

You can quickly check facts against current data

Verify without leaving

Another area where the AI sidebar experience has come in clutch when using NotebookLM is quickly verifying information. Now, I'm not one to say you can fully trust AI chatbots for fact-checking, which is one of the biggest reasons I use NotebookLM. It only relies on my sources and provides citation-backed answers.

However, what if the sources you provided to NotebookLM are outdated? For instance, say I'm researching iPhones and using a notebook that doesn't include any information about the iPhone 17 (but does other models). If I ask NotebookLM which iPhone is currently the latest in the lineup, it'll tell me the iPhone 16, because that's what my sources mention.

With the AI available in the sidebar at all times, I can quickly double-check the current data without leaving NotebookLM. I can ask it, “What’s the latest iPhone model as of now?” and get an up-to-date answer instantly. The sidebar AI lets me quickly cross-check and update such information in real time, ensuring I’m not relying on stale data while still keeping NotebookLM as my primary, grounded source.

The sidebar AI is the quickest way to craft NotebookLM prompts

Prompts made easy

Prompting is incredibly important in NotebookLM. As with any AI tool, the more detailed and descriptive your prompts are, the better responses you'll get. My prompts tend to be messy. I write them in a hurry, don't really pay attention to what I'm writing, and just send them without thinking twice.

Often, NotebookLM asks me to clarify, and then I need to rewrite the prompt properly. A lot of times, I've been taking some of these messy prompts and asking an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini to clean them up and add more detail. Similar to what I mentioned in the previous section, this is another instance where I need to switch from NotebookLM and open another tab just to perform an extremely simple task.

The solution here is the AI chatbot tucked in the side panel. Since it's a generic task that any AI model can perform, it's something any AI browser can handle right there in the sidebar, without forcing you to leave NotebookLM. Once it improves your prompt, all you need to do is use it, and you're good to go. The outputs you generate using NotebookLM features like Audio Overviews, Video Overviews, Reports, etc., can also be customized using prompts. So, the sidebar AI comes in handy there too.

And that’s not everything

Frankly, an AI chatbot in the form of a side panel isn't even the most impressive part of AI browsers. I think the agentic aspect of AI browsers is the most impressive, and pairing it with NotebookLM is game-changing.However, the sidebar chatbot has saved me more time than I can count, and I can't imagine going back to using NotebookLM in a standalone way without it.