Google shows off what ChatGPT would be like in Gmail and Google Docs
This "help me write" box is the jumping off point to have an AI do your office work for you. [credit: Google ]
The "put generative AI in everything" era is kicking off at Google. In addition to the ChatGPT-style features that are eventually coming to Google Search, today Google announced a round of generative AI features for Google Docs and Gmail. Basically, Google plans to eventually, someday, release a text bot that will do all the writing for you. It can reply to emails and make presentations with just a text prompt. As usual for Google and AI, this is not out yet, and the company says it is only "sharing our broader vision" with this blog post.
Just like the rise of Facebook and Google's hyper-aggressive response with Google+, Google is in a total panic over the rise of ChatGPT and AI-powered text. Just like how Google put social features into every product back in the G+ days, the plan going forward is to build ChatGPT-style generative text into every Google product. Google's blog post backs this up by framing this announcement as part of a larger plan, saying, "To start, we're introducing a first set of AI-powered writing features in Docs and Gmail." So far, the company has also promised to put AI into its health care offerings and opened up API access to a language model, but we've yet to see a real consumer product launch.
The company says it's building a "collaborative AI partner" into Workspace and has a breakdown of the future features: