Google Chat’s Gemini Can Now Edit Your Messages
▼ Summary
– Google has integrated its Gemini AI assistant into Google Chat, allowing users to refine and improve their messages.
– The AI tool can help make messages more concise, clear, and professional, and is useful for communicating with large groups or in a second language.
– The feature is enabled by default for eligible users on specific Google Workspace plans, including various Business, Enterprise, and Education tiers.
– Users can access Gemini in Chat by selecting the “Refine” option from the toolbar or by highlighting text they wish to improve.
– This integration is part of a broader trend of AI handling more workday tasks, which has led to concerns about an over-reliance on AI producing subpar results, termed “workslop.”
Google is weaving its Gemini artificial intelligence even deeper into the fabric of its workplace tools, with the assistant now available to edit and refine messages directly within Google Chat. This move signals a broader trend of AI becoming an integral partner in daily professional communication, aiming to enhance clarity and efficiency.
The suspicion that a friend might have used a bot to craft a personal text is becoming a workplace reality. Gemini’s new capability allows Chat users to have the AI assistant draft or polish their messages. The tool is designed to catch grammar and spelling errors while also helping users compose more effective communications for sensitive situations, such as messages to large groups, important stakeholders, or individuals communicating in a non-native language.
This feature activates automatically for users on qualifying plans. Accessibility includes Google Workspace tiers like Business Standard and Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, as well as specific education and frontline packages such as Google AI Pro for Education and Frontline Plus.
Using the tool is straightforward. Individuals can either choose the “Refine” option from the Chat toolbar or simply highlight existing text they wish to improve and select the same command. In a demonstration, Google showed how Gemini can rephrase a query. An original message reading, “Stepping back a bit, how are we tracking against our overall project timeline and key deliverables?” was transformed into, “Taking a moment to look at the bigger picture, how is our project progressing relative to the overall timeline and our key deliverables?” While Google promotes the AI’s goal of creating concise, clear, and professional communication, this particular example resulted in a slightly longer, though perhaps more polished, sentence.
Gemini’s role in the workday continues to expand significantly. Beyond its full integration into the Chrome browser, the AI can already perform tasks like analyzing data in spreadsheets, drafting emails, generating presentation slides, and debugging code. As employees grow more accustomed to delegating tasks to AI, some observers point to potential downsides. This growing dependence has led to the term “workslop,” describing the phenomenon of over-reliance on artificial intelligence that sometimes produces mediocre or unsatisfactory results.
(Source: ZDNET)
