Google announces new AI features in Gmail, Docs, and more to rival Microsoft

Google announced artificial intelligence text generation going into some of its most commonly-used productivity tools, including Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and Chat.

The features include new ways to generate, summarize, and brainstorm text with AI in Google Docs (similar to how many people use OpenAI’s ChatGPT), the option to generate full emails in Gmail based on users’ brief bullet points, and the ability to produce AI imagery, audio, and video to illustrate presentations in Slides (similar to features in both Microsoft Designer, powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E, and Canva, powered by Stable Diffusion).

Google’s Docs example shows the user input “Job post for regional sales rep,” after which the tool creates a surprisingly convincing full job listing, presumably trained on millions of Google search results for similar strings.

Ever since the arrival of ChatGPT last year and Microsoft’s launch of its chatbot-enabled Bing this February, the search giant has been scrambling to launch similar AI features. The company reportedly declared a “code red” in December, with senior management telling staff to add AI tools to all its user products, which are used by billions of people, in a matter of months.