March 15, 2023
Google has announced a slew of new generative AI features for its Workspace apps, including Google Docs, Gmail, Sheets, and Slides. Users will be able to use AI to generate, summarize, and brainstorm text in Google Docs, create full emails in Gmail based on brief bullet points, and generate AI-generated images, audio, and videos for presentations in Slides.
As part of its upgrade to Google Workspace, a product suite with billions of users on free and paid accounts, Google AI will also be able to summarize message threads in Gmail, create slide presentations, personalize customer outreach, and take meeting notes.
Mails can also be drafted, replied to, summarized, and prioritized by the AI. In Docs, it can brainstorm, proofread, write, and rewrite. It can also bring creative vision to life in Slides by using auto-generated images, audio, and video. It can go from raw data to insights and analysis in Sheets via auto-completion, formula generation, and contextual categorization.
Not to mention its ability to create new backgrounds and take notes in Meet, as well as enable workflows for getting things done in Chat. These capabilities are comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Designer powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E, and Canva powered by Stable Diffusion.
It will provide approved test users with access to new Workspace features on a rolling basis throughout the year, similar to how it and Microsoft have phased out their chatbot programs.
In addition, Google is introducing the PaLM API, which enables developers to build on top of their language models in a secure and user-friendly manner. They are now releasing an efficient model with appropriate size and features, and they intend to offer additional models in the near future.
The PaLM API includes an easy-to-use tool called MakerSuite, which allows for quick idea prototyping. Future features will include prompt engineering, synthetic data generation, and custom-model tuning, all backed up by robust safety measures. The PaLM API and MakerSuite are in Private Preview for selected developers.
The sources for this piece include articles in Reuters and TheVerge.
