Google just handed out 700 free textbooks with an AI tutor inside

Google has added a textbook library to Gemini Notebook that you can use at no charge. Josh Woodward, the Google vice president behind Gemini, posted on X overnight that the catalog holds more than 700 books. The company blog is more modest and talks about "hundreds of textbooks" from providers in the US and India, including OpenStax, Open Textbook Library and the Indian publisher S Chand Publishing.

Here is how it works. In a notebook you tap "Add sources", pick "Textbooks" and search by subject or level. From then on Gemini answers questions grounded in the book itself, with inline citations pointing to the exact passage, and it can turn a chapter into a study guide, a practice quiz or flashcards. Until now you could only do that with ebooks bought on Google Play Books or by uploading files yourself.

Officially the feature is rolling out to users in the US and India. Google has said nothing about other countries yet.

One caveat: OpenStax and Open Textbook Library already give their books away under open licenses. Google didn't unlock paywalled titles, it just killed the hassle of hunting down PDFs. For a student with a calculus exam tomorrow that barely matters: a textbook with a tutor built in is now two clicks away.