{"id":3457,"date":"2023-07-09T18:57:52","date_gmt":"2023-07-09T18:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/?p=3457"},"modified":"2024-01-04T16:07:18","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T16:07:18","slug":"google-rebrands-ai-tools-for-docs-and-gmail-as-duet-ai-its-answer-to-microsofts-copilot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/?p=3457","title":{"rendered":"Google rebrands AI tools for Docs and Gmail as Duet AI \u2014 its answer to Microsoft\u2019s Copilot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In March, Google announced a bunch of AI features for its Workspace suite of apps in an effort to keep pace with Microsoft\u2019s rapid integration of similar tools. At Google I\/O, the company has new branding for this effort \u2014\u00a0Duet AI \u2014\u00a0but the features themselves are still not yet widely available to the general public. The company also teased a new feature called \u201cSidekick\u201d that\u2019s able to read, summarize, and answer questions on documents across different Google apps.<\/p>\n<p>Duet AI covers a range of generative AI tools for Google\u2019s productivity apps. As we detailed earlier this year, that includes writing assistance in Docs and Gmail, image generation for Slides, automatic meeting summaries for Meet, and more. But at Google I\/O, the only real <em>news<\/em> news is that writing assistance is also coming to Gmail on mobile, where it will be branded as \u201cHelp me write\u201d \u2014\u00a0an upgrade to Smart Compose. To actually get access to these new tools, though, you\u2019ll need to sign up to Workspace Labs and join a waitlist.<\/p>\n<p>The good news: previously, this waitlist was private and, now, anyone can join. The bad: it\u2019s not clear when people will get access. Google only says that it\u2019s scaling the services \u201cto even more users and countries in the weeks ahead\u201d but gave <em>The Verge<\/em> these estimates for when features will be available: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Write in Gmail \u2014 now available on your phone in addition to web. <em>Available in Workspace Labs today.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Gmail contextual responses. <em>Rolling out to Workspace Labs by the end of the month.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Generate images from text, right within Google Slides. <em>Rolling out to Workspace Labs next month.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Organize complex projects in Google Sheets. <em>Rolling out to Workspace Labs next month<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Intelligent classification in Google Sheets. <em>Rolling out to Workspace Labs in the coming months.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Custom backgrounds in Google Meet. <em>Rolling out to Workspace Labs in the coming months.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>AI building blocks in Docs. <em>Rolling out to Workspace Labs by end of month.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Proofreading in Docs. <em>Rolling out in preview to Workspace commercial users in the coming months.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul><figcaption><em>Google\u2019s AI writing assistant is available in Docs if you\u2019re signed up to Workspace Labs. <\/em><\/figcaption><cite>Image: Google<\/cite><\/p>\n<p>As mentioned above, the only solid news is the \u201cHelp me write\u201d AI assistant on Gmail\u2019s mobile app, which is definitely an interesting prospect. (Microsoft launched something similar in April by integrating Bing into its SwiftKey keyboard app for iOS and Android.) In a roundtable briefing with journalists prior to I\/O, Workspace VP Aparna Pappu noted that it\u2019s a potentially much more useful tool on a platform where you don\u2019t<em> <\/em>have access to a full keyboard but that it also requires a more responsive AI partner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs you can imagine, mobile creates a whole bunch of constraints. Sometimes you\u2019re online, sometimes you\u2019re offline. You really don\u2019t want to fat finger things,\u201d said Pappu. \u201cAnd so we expect people to use far shorter prompts when asking AI to help them write mobile, and we\u2019ve had to tune our experience there to create the best possible output with the least possible input.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>One fun surprise on Gmail is an \u201cI\u2019m feeling lucky\u201d button when using AI to generate responses. Pappu notes that sometimes it will write you a haiku, and other times, it\u2019ll author your reply in a pirate voice. Whimsical? Sure. Useful? Arr, me matey, I\u2019d be saying \u201cnay.\u201d<\/p><figcaption><em>Google also teased a new \u201cSidekick\u201d feature, which appears as a sidepanel in Workspace apps. <\/em><\/figcaption><cite>Image: Google<\/cite><\/p>\n<p>But, of course, Google had more to promise. In particular, a Workspace\/Duet feature named Sidekick, which Pappu described at I\/O as \u201cthe future of collaboration with AI\u201d (though with no date on when it might be available to users.) <\/p>\n<p>In appearance, it looks like a side panel that\u2019s able to analyze the document you\u2019re looking at. Google promises that it will not only be able to answer queries about content, but also suggest its own. So, for example, if you\u2019re writing a story, it might suggest that you generate some images to illustrate it. In another example, the user is writing an email about an upcoming potluck. Not only does Sidekick analyze the contents of the email chain, but it also looks at linked documents \u2014 including, in this case, a list of dishes being served \u2014 and is able to suggest a good accompaniment. <\/p>\n<p>All in all, it\u2019s not a huge step forward for what Google is promising, just a way of interlinking current capabilities. We\u2019re going to have wait a while more for the future, it seems. <\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Update Wednesday May 10th, 10:56:<\/strong> Added more detail on Google Sidekick. <\/em><\/p>\n<hr>\n<h3>Related:<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In March, Google announced a bunch of AI features for its Workspace suite of apps in an effort to keep pace with Microsoft\u2019s rapid integration of similar tools. At Google I\/O, the company has new branding for this effort \u2014\u00a0Duet AI \u2014\u00a0but the features themselves are still not yet widely available to the general public. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[93,95,96,81,84,87,90],"class_list":{"0":"post-3457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-google-fiber","8":"tag-android-phone-guide","9":"tag-android-phone-news","10":"tag-android-phone-reviews","11":"tag-google","12":"tag-google-guide","13":"tag-google-news","14":"tag-google-reviewsandroid-phone"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5087,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3457\/revisions\/5087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}