Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Written by: Martin Dale Bolima, Tech Journalist, AOPG.

It was just a matter of time before Google complemented its highly popular Google Workspace with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, of course, generative AI capabilities. After all, Microsoft already did it with Microsoft 365 Copilot unleashing creativity, unlocking productivity, and elevating the skills of the productivity suite’s millions of users.

Duet AI in Google Workspace is looking to do the same, this time for users of, yes, Google Workspace, Google’s suite of cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools used by an equally large number of both individuals and businesses worldwide.

What Is Duet AI in Google Workspace

Again, Duet AI in Google Workspace is Google’s answer to Microsoft Copilot. It is, in the own words of Google, a “powerful collaborator that can act as a coach, thought partner, source of inspiration, and productivity booster—all while ensuring every user and organisation has control over their data.

Duet AI in Google Workspace supposedly unlocks a new way of working, with generative AI helping Google Workspace users to accomplish a variety of tasks easily, creatively, and effectively. Among these tasks are:

• Writing customer proposals and similar documents in Google Docs.
• Drafting emails for customers and invites for executives.
• Generating custom visuals in Google Slides.
• Creating project trackers and similar documents in Google Sheets.

So, for instance, think of a financial analyst tasked to create a presentation about, say the organisation’s first-quarter performance. It is a time-consuming task that will require careful scrutiny of financial assets and similar documentation before creating the actual slides for the expected output. Duet AI, though, takes the nitty-gritty out of it all. The concerned individual can just ask Duet AI to summarise the data in the documents and then instruct it to produce the presentation using the text, charts, images, and other relevant information given to it.

Supercharging Google Meet and Google Chat

Duet in Google Workspace also works magic in Google Meet, a platform for team-building and workflow management, and Google Chat, the suite’s communication tool.

As any professional would know, needless meetings and long conversations are a massive waste of time, which would be more useful if allocated to more productive, value-adding tasks. Duet AI can do that by integrating powerful new capabilities into both Google Meet and Google Chat.

Duet AI, for instance, has the “Attend for Me” feature, a capability that accomplishes exactly what its name suggests: Attend a Google Meet meeting on behalf of a particular user. Among other things, Duet AI can take down notes, list action items, and even record short videos in real-time with its “Take notes for me” capability. After “attending” the meeting, Duet AI can then send a summary of it to the attendees themselves or to those who were unable to make it—thus ensuring that everyone is up-to-date and in the loop.

Meanwhile, Duet AI has reimagined Google Chat, refreshing its interface, offering new shortcuts, and improving the search function. It has also introduced a Huddle feature similar to the one Slack introduced previously, which lets users conduct short, impromptu voice chats akin to watercooler talk conversations. Together, these improved and new capabilities can facilitate quicker, on-the-go conversations to save time and enhance productivity.

But there is more. Duet AI also lets users directly converse with Google Chat. For instance, users can ask questions about the content of conversations, direct it to summarise chats, review missed conversations, or get the important points in documents shared over Google Chat. It even has a smart reply feature for better, more personalised replies, both in the chat feature and in Gmail.

More to Come for Duet AI for Google Workspace

As it is, Duet in AI for Google Workspace is a productivity tool in and of itself integrated into a productivity suite full of useful and helpful features. Google, of course, is not done. It never is because it is promising more from its AI-driven assistant.

Based on Google’s reputation alone, expect even greater things moving forward.

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