Expanding Duet AI Features Testing on Gmail, Docs, and Drive: Google’s Latest Move

Google’s Duet AI, an artificial intelligence (AI) feature designed to enhance real-time collaboration across its suite of online services, is reportedly undergoing expanded testing. Initially showcased during Google I/O 2023, Duet AI has since remained in a closed testing phase. As part of its broader rollout strategy, Google is now trialing the feature with users who are part of the Workspace Labs program.

According to a recent report from 9to5Google, select users enrolled in the Workspace Labs program have begun to notice the appearance of Duet AI’s side panel across various Google online applications. Upon opening these apps, users are greeted with a welcome screen explaining the availability of these early experimental features. Typically, beta testers gain access to experimental features for a limited time. It is anticipated that following the conclusion of testing, Duet AI will be integrated into the Google One AI Premium plan for personal Google account holders.

Duet AI offers specific functionalities within online apps, and users can expand the side panel to occupy half the screen in all applications except Gmail, as reported. This expansion of testing signifies Google’s commitment to refining Duet AI’s capabilities before a wider release across its online service ecosystem.

Google announced a detailed overview of the features in a blog post last year. In Gmail, Duet AI can summarise email threads, explain conversations in a simplified language, suggest, write, and improve replies, and even find information from other emails. Users can ask the AI questions such as “When is my next flight” and it will scan through the emails to find the booking details and will give a concise answer.

Similarly, in Google Drive, the Duet AI side panel can be used to track files, summarise project folders, create bullet points from large documents, and even answer queries involving data from the files in the Drive and emails in Gmail. Coming to Google Docs, Duet AI can showcase its full range of generative capabilities as it can brainstorm ideas, write content from scratch, add to pre-written content, create tables, generate images, and more. Google claims that Duet AI can understand contextual speech and can collaborate with the user to improve efficiency.

In Google Sheets, using the “help me organise” capability, the AI assistant can create custom plans for tasks, projects, or activities. This includes creating tables, and formulas, adding filters, and even performing goals-based tasks from scratch.

In Google Slides, Duet AI can generate slides as per specifications, add elements and images, write words, summarise presentations, add slide animation, and even create customised presentation layouts. While the report does not mention it, Duet AI was also planned for Google Meet where it could generate unique backgrounds. These features are expected to make their way to subscribers when Duet AI exits beta testing in the future.