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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Gemini arrives in Google Chat.
- Chat users can have the AI assistant write their messages.
- AI tools are infiltrating more points of communication.
People are already using AI to write emails and documents — some even suspect their friends are using ChatGPT to write heartfelt texts, too. In that vein, Gemini is coming to Google Chat, Google announced on Tuesday.
The AI assistant can refine messages and catch grammar or spelling errors for Google Chat users. Google also highlighted Gemini’s usefulness when composing a message to a large group, a stakeholder, or someone communicating in a second language.
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The feature is enabled by default for eligible users. Gemini in Google Chat is available for Business Standard and Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, Google AI Pro for Education, Google AI Ultra for Business, Frontline Plus, and Google AI Pro and Ultra plans.
How to try it
To use Gemini in Google Chat, users can either select “Refine” from the toolbar or highlight the text they want to improve and then select “Refine.”
In its blog post, Google demos the Refine feature in Chat by providing drafted text that a user wants to refine.
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Gemini switches out “Stepping back a bit, how are we tracking against our overall project timeline and key deliverables?” for “Taking a moment to look at the bigger picture, how is our project progressing relative to the overall timeline and our key deliverables?” Google says the AI tool aims to make work communication more concise, clear, accurate, and professional (though in this example, Gemini’s suggestion is certainly less concise).
Gemini is handling more and more workday tasks. Aside from now being fully integrated with Chrome, it can analyze spreadsheets, draft emails, create presentation slides, and fix code. Workers are cozying up to the new technology, increasingly handing off tasks to AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT — so much so that Harvard Business Review coined a new term for workers’ over-reliance on AI and its lackluster outcomes: “workslop.”
