UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State has recently added two tools to its growing portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI) services: Google’s Gemini and Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM).
Before getting started
For faculty, staff and students new to AI, the University strongly suggests completing AI Essentials, a foundational AI literacy course designed to equip the University community with the knowledge, skills and ethical grounding needed to engage with AI responsibly and effectively across academic and professional contexts. Additional resources and guidelines around AI use can be found on Penn State’s AI website.
Gemini
Gemini is a general-purpose AI assistant for everyday writing, thinking and productivity tasks across academic and professional use.
Key features and benefits:
- Expanded capabilities — As a standalone enterprise tool outside of AI Studio, Gemini expands your capabilities by allowing you to create custom Gemini Gems (Agents) for tailored tasks. It also provides integration directly within the Chrome browser and a connection to Gemini Notebook for advanced document research and analysis.
- Multimodal intelligence — Analyzes text, images, spreadsheets and code simultaneously.
- Google workspace integration — Pulls data from or exports results directly to Google Docs and Sheets.
- Code generation and refactoring — Writes, debugs and translates software code across dozens of programming languages.
- Added data protection — Penn State’s Gemini licensing includes added data protection.
For more information on session and usage limits, specific uses for students, faculty and staff, and additional support and training resources, visit the Gemini page on Penn State’s AI website.
Gemini Notebook
Gemini Notebook is a specialized, source-grounded AI-powered research assistant that uses Gemini as its underlying AI engine. Unlike general AI models that pull from the entire internet, Gemini Notebook acts as a personalized expert on the exact documents you upload. It creates a closed information ecosystem, ensuring answers are strictly accurate and explicitly cited from your specific materials.
Key features and benefits:
- Source-grounded accuracy — Reduces traditional AI "hallucinations" by grounding responses in uploaded sources.
- Automatic citations — Every response includes clickable citation numbers that jump directly to the exact paragraph in your source document, making it useful for literature reviews.
- Audio overviews — Converts complex, multi-document research packages into an interactive, podcast-style audio discussion featuring two AI hosts summarizing the material.
For more information on session and usage limits, additional information on Gemini Notebook’s capabilities, and support and training resources, visit the Gemini Notebook page on Penn State’s AI website.
Data protection
To ensure data security, only Level 1 (public) or Level 2 (moderate) data should be used with Gemini and Gemini Notebook. While the tools do not use data from the Gemini or Gemini Notebook Workspaces to train their AI model, it is still crucial to exercise caution. Ensure you understand Penn State’s data classification guidelines, and do not use Gemini or Gemini Notebook with Level 3 or 4 data.
Need help?
If you have questions or need assistance, contact the IT Service Desk by submitting an online help request through Penn State’s IT Help Portal.