Google brings more AI to Google Docs and other Workspace apps with Google I/O

Tuesday's Google I/O marked the big introduction of additional AI capabilities coming soon to Google's much-trusted, but little-loved, Google Workspace software suite.

Gemini 1.5 Pro, the language model family formerly known as Bard, is now built into the side panel of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, as well as Drive and Gmail. While these applications are already interconnected, this set of capabilities could theoretically be achieved through a bubbly AI-powered assistant that could teleport from app to app to perform previously labor-intensive work tasks. The purpose is to automate those connections.

Google clearly envisions a more seamless and unified experience across Workspace by centralizing all your documents and data. With Gemini's features always available on screen, users are encouraged to ask the bot routine questions and make small favors. While using Docs, Gemini can examine the details contained in emails and automatically organize lists into spreadsheets.

Nor does the user have to specify exactly which application Gemini expects Gemini to use to perform the function in question. In the demo, the user simply asks her AI assistant to help her organize, and the AI ​​assistant invents a system that places files in new folders and organizes the data in those files into a spreadsheet.

Credit: Mashable screenshot of Google presentation

If you're excited about the possibilities of AI-assisted workflows, it's worth taking a moment to pause and consider data security. last year, new york times According to the report, when Google tried to revise its privacy agreement to start mining users' public Google Docs for AI training data, there was a lot of internal discussion. Google can currently use such data in accordance with its user agreement, but chooses to only incorporate data from users who have opted in to experimental Google features. times report.

Also note that I've only seen the demo so far. Until now, AI assistants have been buggy, lying robots that were brought to market far too quickly. As OpenAI catches up to Google, Google can't just jump on the trend with new AI-powered features for Workspace. As the name suggests, it should do the following: work.