Google Illuminate is quietly becoming the best research tool I didn’t know I needed

I didn’t expect much the first time I tried Google Illuminate. It seemed like another experimental project from Google that I would engage with for a short time.

But after feeding it my first academic paper and listening to the AI-generated podcast, something clicked. Suddenly, dense PDFs I’d been avoiding for months stopped feeling like homework.

Illuminate helped summarize research and translate it into something I could absorb on a busy day. And before I realized it, it had become a part of my learning routine.