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Empowering businesses of all sizes with new generative AI and security innovations in Google Workspace

April 9, 2024
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Aparna Pappu

GM and Vice President, Google Workspace

Google Workspace Newsletter

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Today we’re announcing the next wave of innovations and enhancements to Google Workspace, starting with Google Vids, our new AI-powered video creation app for work. More than 15 years ago, we introduced the world to a new way of working with the first-ever cloud-native text editors in Docs, Sheets, and Slides. All you needed was a browser to create and collaborate on rich online documents. Now we’re bringing the same magic of real-time collaboration to video, allowing people everywhere to tap into immersive storytelling at work. Vids is being released to Workspace Labs in June.

We’re also announcing two commercial offers that allow you to bring AI-powered meetings and messaging, as well as AI-powered security, to everyone in your organization, each for only $10 per user, per month. In addition, Gemini is coming to Google Chat in preview, giving you an AI-powered teammate to summarize conversations, answer questions, and more. And finally, we’re making it easy for organizations to extend the power of their data and custom AI models by using Vertex AI with Workspace as a platform, enabling next-generation workflows that are built right into Docs, Gmail, and other Workspace apps.

Over the last year, we’ve released hundreds of features and enhancements to Google Workspace and Gemini for Workspace. And we’re seeing them have a real impact with our customers. In fact, 70% of enterprise users who use Help me write in Docs or Gmail end up taking Gemini's suggestions, and more than 75% of users who create images in Slides are inserting them into their presentations. 

Gemini is helping people take back time for higher value work, like employees at Onix, a global cloud consulting company, who are saving the equivalent of an entire day of work every month using Gemini, or the team at Sports Basement, a sporting goods retailer, who’ve reduced the time it takes to craft responses to customer support requests by 30-35%. Across our business, education, and government customers, Gemini is helping people of all backgrounds and skill levels outdo themselves.

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How businesses are using Gemini for Google Workspace

Fueling storytelling at work with AI-powered video

People tell stories at work every day, whether it’s HR onboarding new employees to the organization’s mission, the training team creating digital learning experiences, or a salesperson pitching a new client on the benefits of their offering. As a storytelling medium, video has become ubiquitous for its immediacy and ability to “cut through the noise,” but it can be daunting to know where to start. 

Now, everyone can be a great storyteller through video with Google Vids, a new AI-powered video creation app for work. Vids is your video, writing, production, and editing assistant, all in one. It can generate a storyboard that you can easily edit, and after choosing a style, it pieces together your first draft with suggested scenes from stock videos, images, and background music. It can also help you land your message with the right voiceover — either choosing from one of our preset voiceovers, or using your own. Vids will sit alongside our other productivity tools like Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Like them, it includes a simple, easy-to-use interface and the ability to collaborate and share projects securely from your browser. It's an entirely new app that can help anyone become a great storyteller at work.

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Google Vids in action

A new AI Meetings and Messaging add-on

AI features like Take notes for me (now in preview) let you drop the pen and lean into the conversation instead of taking notes. Translate for me (coming in June) will automatically detect and translate captions in Meet with support for 69 languages (equal to 4,600 language pairs), helping people feel more confident and connected to their colleagues, regardless of language. And later this year we’ll launch automatic translation of messages and on-demand conversation summaries in Google Chat.

At Pepperdine University, these features are enabling meetings and learning in multiple languages: “The captioning within Google Meet is going to be a huge game changer in extending equity and accessibility, especially for those with language barriers...With Gemini for Google Workspace, we can now quickly transcribe meeting minutes within Google Docs and summarize them in a succinct way to share with our users.” — Jonathan See, CIO, Pepperdine University

We're making all of this available today in a new AI Meetings and Messaging add-on for just $10 per user, per month, and it can be added to most Workspace plans.

A new AI Security add-on

Data privacy and security continues to be top of mind in the era of generative AI, with data breaches increasing 20% last year. Unlike traditional email and productivity solutions, Gmail and Workspace were built from the very beginning on a cloud-native architecture, rooted in zero-trust principles, and augmented with AI-powered threat defenses. That’s why Gmail blocks more than 99.9% of spam, phishing attempts, and malware from reaching your inbox. And now, using large language models, we’re blocking an additional 20% more spam in Gmail and can evaluate 1,000 times more user-reported spam in Gmail every day. 

To help businesses of all sizes keep up with the evolving security landscape, today we’re making available a new AI Security add-on for $10 per user, per month that allows IT teams to automatically classify and protect sensitive files company-wide in Google Drive. This capability uses privacy-preserving AI models trained using data unique to your organization, enabling continuous evaluation, classification, and protection of existing and new files in Drive, for all of your employees, including frontline workers.

Because the job of security is never done, we’re also continuing to innovate to help you keep your data safe and make Gmail the most secure email for business. To that end, we’re extending DLP controls and classification labels to Gmail in beta. And to help protect your most sensitive data against quantum computer attacks, we’re adding experimental support for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in client-side encryption together with our partners, including Thales and Fortanix.

Transforming workflows with Workspace and Vertex AI

We’re making it easy to build custom AI agents with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and Google Workspace. By using Model Garden on Vertex AI, you can choose the right model for your needs from more than 130 options, and the Workspace add-on framework can allow you to bring that custom agent into the productivity apps you use everyday in Workspace, streamlining workflows, enhancing collaboration, and freeing up valuable time across your team.

Bristol Myers Squibb, a global biopharmaceutical company, has used Vertex AI and Workspace to transform the documentation process at the heart of clinical trials. Historically, the creation of Informed Consent Forms (ICFs), which summarize the purpose of a clinical trial, outline the details of the medicine, and its potential risks and interactions, has involved weeks of manual effort from scientists and clinicians. Now, with Vertex AI and Google Workspace, a draft ICF can happen in minutes.

“We can now assemble data in the background so that our clinical scientists spend less time searching and building documents from various data sources. This has taken much of the documentation burden away from the clinical scientists all while maintaining our privacy and data security. These documents previously took us weeks to assemble. Now, we can create our first draft for human review in mere minutes.” — Matteo di Tomasso, Senior Vice President of Global Drug Discovery IT, Bristol Myers Squibb

More improvements coming to Workspace

We’re also continuing to improve and add capabilities to existing Workspace and Gemini features, including:

  • Voice prompting and instant polish in Gmail: Send emails easily when you’re on the go with voice input in Help me write, and convert rough notes to a complete email with one-click.

  • New tables and notifications in Sheets: Our new tables feature (generally available in the coming weeks) does the heavy lifting to format and organize data with a sleek design. Select an option from our new set of pre-built tables — from project management to event planning — so you never have to build a spreadsheet from scratch again. We’re also introducing conditional notifications, which are automatic alerts based on custom triggers like a change in a status field.

  • Tabs and personalization in Docs: Now with tabs you can organize information in a single document instead of linking to multiple documents or searching through Drive to find what you’re looking for. We’re also making it easy for you to personalize documents with full-bleed cover images that extend from one edge of your browser to the other. Both features will be generally available in the coming weeks.

  • Increased member capacity and interoperability in Chat: Increased member capacity of up to 500,000 in spaces will be generally available in the coming weeks. We’re also streamlining everyday communication with the general availability of messaging interoperability for Slack and Teams through our partner Mio.

Get started today with Gemini for Workspace

Every day we’re inspired by how our customers are using Workspace and Gemini to make their work more impactful, inclusive, and fulfilling. Seeing our customers outdo themselves is what drives us to continue making products that help people connect, create, and work safer – together.

If you’d like to try Gemini, or you’re interested in one of the new add-ons, you can get started with a no-cost trial.

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