After Microsoft, it’s Googhle’s turn to integrate AI into its office suite. Workspace users will be able to rely on an intelligent assistant to automatically generate documents, including in Gmail!
Ever since ChatGPT, OpenAI’s breakthrough chatbot, hit the internet in late 2022, Microsoft and Google have been in a frantic AI race. A few days ago, the start-up announced the release of GPT-4, the new version of the language model that powers ChatGPT – and which is already integrated into Bing’s chatbot. Neither one nor two, Google responded by announcing on his blog the integration of artificial intelligence in the services of its Google Workspace suite, in particular in Gmail, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Chat and Meet. “We are currently at a pivotal moment in our AI journey. Breakthroughs in generative AI are dramatically changing the way people interact with technology,” explains the Internet giant in a post. Thus, users can delegate certain writing or content creation tasks to artificial intelligence.
Google Workspace: AI as an assistant
Integrating AI into Google services should save users valuable time when performing administrative tasks. Thus, they will simply have to enter a subject or an instruction so that the artificial intelligence generates a draft, which they can modify and edit as they wish – to write a welcome e-mail to a new employee for example. Likewise, she can “write, answer, summarize and prioritize” emails in Gmail. She will also be able to summarize a conversation comprising several e-mails, to suggest an appropriate response, or to convert notes taken in the form of points into a presentable text.
On Sheets – the equivalent of Microsoft Excel – the AI will be able to pass “from raw data to insights and analysis through auto-completion, formula generation and contextual categorization”. In addition, it will be able to automatically generate images, sound and videos in Slides. Finally, she will be able to generate new backgrounds and take notes in Meet, as well as“enable workflows to get things done in Chat.” That sounds pretty promising on paper!
Google Workspace: an AI race with Microsoft
Just after Google’s announcement, Microsoft unveiled at a conference the integration into its Microsoft 365 suite of Copilot, an AI that serves as an assistant for creating PowerPoint presentations, writing Word documents, summarizing Excel tables, and which promises to be truly revolutionary (see our article). It’s definitely war between the two digital giants! However, this speed of innovation and the lack of reliability of these AI models do not fail to raise some concerns, particularly in terms of the security of users’ professional data and the reliability of the technology.
Indeed, we necessarily fear errors, drifts and hallucinations – these moments when AIs start doing and saying anything –, especially since Microsoft puts pressure on Google and leads it to rush too much, as was the case with Bard’s presentation, which was a complete fiasco and caused the company to lose a lot of money (see our article). And as much as it can make you smile when you test a chatbot, it can quickly turn out to be problematic in the middle of the job, with an artificial intelligence that would invent new customers or new products, that would attribute quotes or ideas cited in meeting the wrong people, or who would make a mistake summarizing a Sheets table with hundreds of rows! “Sometimes artificial intelligence gets it wrong. Sometimes it regales you with a quirky thing, and often it needs guidance,” admits Google.
In view of the controversies with LaMDA, its language model which would be endowed with a conscience according to one of its former collaborators, the unreliability of Google Bard, the cable breakdowns of Bing’s chatbot or even the excesses of My AI of Snapchat, we can legitimately ask ourselves questions about the race for AI which seems to have won over tech companies for a few months which, not wanting to be competitive, sometimes release their technologies too quickly, without having asked the guards -crazy necessary. Google would pay great attention to its AI with “thoughtful experimentation and many iterations based on user feedback”in order to set up“safeguards against abuse, protecting the privacy of user data and respecting customer controls over data governance.” Thus, the new AI integrated into the Workspace suite will first be tested by trusted American programmers. No date of availability for the general public or price have been communicated – will this AI be offered via a paid option or added free of charge to Google’s tools? More information should be given at the company’s annual conference, Google I/O, which will take place on May 10.
