NotebookLM adds customizable infographic styles

Google's NotebookLM is rolling out customizable infographic styles, giving users ten preset visual themes alongside a free-text description field for custom guidance. The update applies to the tool's existing infographic generation feature, which converts uploaded research sources into structured visual summaries.

The style picker, visible in the updated "Customize Infographic" dialog, offers: Auto-select, Sketch Note, Kawaii, Professional, Scientific, Anime, Clay, Editorial, Instructional, Bento Grid, and Bricks. Users can also choose orientation (landscape, portrait, or square) and a level of detail — concise, standard, or a beta "detailed" tier. A description field lets users steer the output further, with placeholder text suggesting prompts like "Use a blue color theme and highlight the 3 key stats."

The range of the presets is genuinely striking when seen side by side. A single source set on puppy crate training, used as the demo topic in the announcement video, produces outputs that are visually unrecognizable from one another: the Editorial preset yields a flat-design, dark navy and gold layout with geometric shapes; the Clay preset renders a full 3D sculpted scene; the Anime preset produces a manga-style split panel comic; the Bricks preset renders everything in a LEGO-like aesthetic, down to the color palette. The Kawaii style delivers pastel clouds, wide-eyed illustrated characters, and rainbow bar charts.

The release is a modest product update on its own terms. But it reflects a broader shift in how AI productivity tools are differentiating themselves.

For the past two years, the primary competition among AI research and writing tools has played out along capability lines: which tool retrieves better sources, generates more accurate summaries, or handles larger document sets. Style and presentation have been secondary. That seems to be changing.

NotebookLM now generates audio overviews, video summaries, slide decks, mind maps, flashcards, quizzes, data tables, and now infographics alongside its core research functions.