I found an open-source NotebookLM alternative that's powerful, private - and free

"NotebookLM has become an incredibly popular tool for research, organizing, interacting with documents, generating summaries, creating flashcards, and producing tailored reports. With NotebookLM, you can add your own sources and then use AI to make informative connections between those sources, which leads to an even better understanding of the material. NotebookLM only works on uploaded material, so you control the sources."

"The biggest issue with NotebookLM is that it's a cloud-based service, so you cannot run it locally. Although you can link NotebookLM to locally-installed AI (such as Ollama), that combination's use is limited to certain functions. If you want to limit NotebookLM to only use locally-installed AI, you'd be out of luck. What do you do if you place a high value on privacy, but still need to use a tool like NotebookLM within your home network?"

"If you're serious about your privacy and the privacy of your data, Open Notebook is the only way to go. Think about it this way: using NotebookLM requires that you upload your sources to a third-party cloud service. Those sources could contain sensitive information about you, your family, your friends, or your company. Do you really want to hand that over to a third party? I don't. That's why I opted for Open Notebook over NotebookLM. Let me describe my experience installing this tool."

Open Notebook is an open-source implementation of NotebookLM that can be installed and used for free. It enables research workflows, organizing and interacting with documents, generating summaries, creating flashcards, and producing tailored reports. Open Notebook can use locally installed AI models, preserving data privacy because sources remain on the user's machines. NotebookLM is cloud-based and requires uploading sources to a third-party service, preventing fully local operation and limiting privacy-sensitive use. Deploying Open Notebook requires familiarity with Linux and container technologies. Open Notebook provides a private alternative for users who need local AI integration and control over sensitive materials.

Read at ZDNET