If you keep up with Google and its moves in artificial intelligence, you could probably guess that AI would be a hot topic at this year’s Google I/O developer conference. In a blog post this week, the company even proclaimed that “Google is fully in our Gemini era.” With Gemini as the connective tissue, Google is ultimately aiming to integrate its product suite in novel ways to make work and life easier.
“At I/O we introduced a wave of new Gemini for Google Workspace features that our users will love. We’re particularly excited about the ways we’re infusing Gemini into Gmail on mobile to help people stay connected and productive on the go. Whether it’s conversation summaries, even more contextual suggested replies, or the new, intuitive Q&A experience, Gemini in Gmail will make inbox navigation quicker and easier than ever,” Google told us in a statement.
Google Workspace and personal productivity
Virtual project management
Google VP of Workspace, Aparna Pappu, highlighted the integration of the company’s latest model, Gemini 1.5 Pro, into Workspace. In one use case, Gemini could proactively transcribe a Google Meet meeting, summarize it, and capture the key takeaways and action items in a well-organized Google Doc, then place it on Google Drive. It might also leverage the transcript to assign tasks and due dates to team members. In other words, we’re getting pretty close to having virtual project management at our fingertips.
By the way, while the release of 1.5 Pro has begun, it’s impossible to be certain about exactly when certain features will be released and to whom. This is common with SaaS platforms, and especially common with Google. Expect to see some of these features in the near future, but it may be a while until you’ve got access to them all.
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A big change for those who use Gmail
Google also announced that its Summarize feature is coming to Gmail on mobile. With Summarize on mobile, you will be able to ask Gemini to summarize an email or a thread. This new capability should unlock some nice on-the-go conveniences. From within Gmail, you might ask Gemini to summarize an email thread, find an available meeting time for the stakeholders mentioned in it, and send out the invitations. Another likely use case is that Gemini would automate the categorization and saving of attachments to Drive.
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According to Google, you’ll also be able to type standard text prompts into an email card, such as “Compare my roofing bids,” and then get a summary of the bids you’ve received from different roofers for a project. There are lots of compelling possibilities here that could make the mobile user experience generally more efficient while diminishing some of the limitations of a small-screen user interface.
Google Sheets steps up
It’s going to be in your databases, too
Google I/O also marked the first Gemini-based integration between Sheets and other Workspace apps. In the example Google gave, from within Gmail, a user might ask Gemini to help organize and track their receipts. The receipts would then be aggregated from email, automatically saved to a folder on Drive, and then added to a new, properly formatted Google Sheet with AI-generated columns. The especially cool thing here is that this entire workflow could be automated, according to Google. Sheets will also offer AI expense analysis, categorization, and visualization.
For anyone who has run a small business and spent hours toiling over these things, this should come as a breath of fresh air. That said, this particular functionality is a little further out on Google’s roadmap, targeted for release to Labs users in late September.
Google is well-positioned in AI
Expect more and more Gemini to come
Google’s I/O developer conference showcased a heavy emphasis on Gemini as the central hub for the company’s product ecosystem. Given how much ground the various Google Workspace apps cover, automating workflows, dataflows, and analysis across the ecosystem is a strategic move that makes a ton of sense for the company’s users and its future. Whether users will go for it is another matter entirely, but this is the first time we’ve seen Google wholeheartedly make it clear that Gemini is set to pull tools from across the company together.
