Search engine behemoth Google on Tuesday announced the company will be introducing AI-powered writing features in Google Workspaces, particularly in Docs and Gmail, to trusted testers on a rolling basis throughout the year, before making them available for everyone. The new features will be launched in the English language in the US this month. The development comes a month after Sundar Pichai-led company rolled out a chatbot named ‘Bard’ in February this year.
"We’re now making it possible for Workspace users to harness the power of generative AI to create, connect, and collaborate like never before. To start, we’re introducing a first set of AI-powered writing features in Docs and Gmail to trusted testers," the company says in a blog post.
How will new AI-powered features work?
According to the search engine behemoth, with the help of these new features, users will be able to draft, reply, summarise, and prioritise Gmail and brainstorm, proofread, write, and rewrite in Google Docs. The new AI-powered features will enable users to auto-integrate images, audio, and video in slides, and to convert raw data to insights and analysis via auto-completion, formula generation, and contextual categorisation in Sheets. When integrated into Google Meet, the new feature will help generate new backgrounds and capture notes.
"Blank pages can stump the best of us. That’s why we’re embedding generative AI in Docs and Gmail to help people get started writing. Simply type a topic you’d like to write about, and a draft will instantly be generated for you. With your collaborative AI partner you can continue to refine and edit, getting more suggestions as needed," the company says.
Google, however, says that the AI-powered features will not hamper the "ingenuity, creativity, and smarts of real people." According to the company, the new features are designed keeping in mind that users should remain in control. The AI will merely make suggestions that the users can edit and change. "We'll also deliver the corresponding administrative controls so that IT is able to set the right policies for their organization," the tech behemoth says.
Over the past few years, Generative AI has become the hot cake in the global tech industry, with tech giants such as Google and Microsoft investing billions of dollars to develop new products associated with it. Last month, Google launched chatbot ‘Bard’, a new experimental conversational GoogleAI service, which is powered by LaMDA. LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) is a powerful AI model that Google first released in May 2021. It works on similar technology as ChatGPT.
In February, the social engine behemoth also invested about $300 million in artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic, which is a rival of Microsoft-backed OpenAI. As part of the deal, Google will buy a 10% stake in Anthropic, which is testing a potential rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT as both startups work on generative AI models. The deal also entails Anthropic selecting Google Cloud as its preferred cloud provider, which basically gives it the cloud infrastructure performance and scales it needs to emerge as a serious rival against ChatGPT.
