I turned a white paper into a presentation in 5 minutes with NotebookLM

White papers are some of the most difficult documents to read and understand. Even when you’re able to make sense of them, translating that into something clear and accurate, especially for a presentation, is another challenge entirely. Now, of course, we do have conversational AI chatbots, like Claude, that are excellent at summarizing complex material, but they rely on training data, inferred context, and external sources. As a result, it can be hard to trust that the output truly reflects just the document you read or your research findings.

To avoid this kind of bias and ensure the summary accurately reflects what I’ve read, I use NotebookLM. Its biggest advantage is that it only works with the sources you upload. That makes it ideal for making sense of and creating presentations of white papers, research reports, and long-form technical documentation.

Turning a security white paper into a presentation How I customized and generated the slide deck with NotebookLM

A few days ago, I wanted to understand better how safe it really is to use Google Cloud services. Like many people, I’m cautious about where my data lives and who can access it. I’m not someone who automatically gravitates toward open-source tools, but I do value transparency. I want to know what security measures are in place, who has visibility into my data, and how risks are evaluated.

To dig into this, I downloaded two security white papers from Google Cloud’s white paper page: the Google Cloud NGFW Enterprise Certified Secure Test Report and the Google Cloud NGFW Enterprise CyberRisk Validation Report. Miercom completed the first report, while SecureIQlab completed the second. I deliberately chose these documents because they were produced by third-party organizations rather than Google itself. When evaluating claims about security and risk, external validation carries more weight.

After downloading the reports, I created a new notebook in NotebookLM and uploaded both PDFs. From there, I clicked the pencil icon next to Slide Deck in the Studio panel, which opens the Customize Slide Deck menu. I selected the Detailed Deck format, kept the length at Default, chose English as the language, and added the following prompt in the description box:

I’d like to understand the security implications of Google Cloud’s model. Google claims to focus on security and data protection as its primary design criteria. Please address the findings of both reports, especially as they relate to me as a Google Cloud services end user. I'd like a minimalist look with the slides, preferably colors blue and white, and stick figures for the diagrams.

After clicking Generate, NotebookLM produced a full slide deck in just a few minutes. Although the tool includes a warning that the output could be inaccurate due to AI hallucination, I was impressed by how closely the slides reflected the content across the original 37 dense pages (one white paper was 17 pages, while the other spanned 20). The structure, emphasis, and conclusions aligned with what I had skimmed and noted. Instead of spending hours distilling the material manually, I had a usable presentation almost immediately.

Related NotebookLM's Latest Trick Is Creating Videos From Your Notes

Tired of reading your notes? NotebookLM will soon let you watch them instead.

How my NotebookLM-generated presentations fit into my broader workflow The tool is great, but the export can be annoying Screenshot by Ada

The only real friction point came when I wanted to move the presentation into Google Slides. NotebookLM doesn’t currently support direct exports to Slides, and the available options — sharing a notebook link, downloading the deck as a PDF, or presenting directly from the app — didn't fit my workflow.

To get around this limitation, I settled on a simple workaround. In my browser, on the web app, I right-clicked each slide and selected save image as….

Screenshot by Ada

After downloading all the slide images, I opened Google Slides, created a blank presentation, and uploaded each image using Insert -> Image -> Upload from computer. It’s not an elegant solution, but it works, and it still saves a massive amount of time compared to manually distilling white papers and building slides from scratch. Plus, if a slide doesn't quite hit the nail on the head, I can create another one in Google Slides or use Canva's Magic Studio to edit the slide before uploading it.

This workflow can be further extended by layering in additional tools. For example, you can generate the speaker notes you’d add to Google Slides using NotebookLM or another AI tool by feeding it the relevant slide images or the full deck. This way, you can select the Presenter Slides format to keep your slides visually clean while still having detailed talking points.

You could also pair NotebookLM with a note-taking tool like Obsidian or Notion to store the summaries, key quotes, and answers to your follow-up questions alongside the original white papers. In that setup, the presentation becomes just one part of a larger research workflow rather than a standalone report.

Related Speed is great when the summary stays faithful to the source material

Ultimately, NotebookLM enables you to work faster without sacrificing trust in the source material. At every step, you know what the AI tool is summarizing or distilling from, which removes much of the uncertainty that comes with AI-generated output.

If you regularly have to make sense of white papers, audits, or technical reports, NotebookLM offers a practical way to move quickly while staying grounded in your own documents.

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