Following last week’s announcements at I/O 2023, Google previewed a few more generative Duet AI features coming to Workspace today, including Smart Notes in Meet.
Google’s original generative AI teaser in March briefly showed how Meet would soon be able to automatically take notes during a video call. Besides providing a summary, Meet can create action items in what looks to be Google Tasks.
Controls for “Smart Notes” will appear in the top-right corner of Meet’s web UI alongside the option to “Make meeting private” and disable.
Google also showed off “Dynamic Layouts” in Meet, where AI is leveraged to better fit people’s video feeds onto a screen. Meet will crop empty space while ensuring people stay in the frame.
Instead of a landscape video window, Google might change it to a portrait feed so that you’ll see more people in a fuller manner per screen and less of the black background. As part of this, the toolbar of meeting controls might shift to allow the “Chat message” box to appear.
Meanwhile, following the wider rollout last week of “Help me write” to Gmail and Docs on the web, Google said the feature is coming to the mobile apps. In Gmail, expect a floating action button (FAB) in the Compose screen for entering prompts.
In addition to reiterating that there are currently 9 million paying Workspace subscribers, Google summarized how it sees generative AI as useful across its biggest apps.
In Gmail, generative AI is meant to help you “communicate faster with just the right words to express yourself.” Bullet points here include “Summarize threads” and “Organize your inbox.” The former capability has been shown off in a demo video (seen below), while it’s unclear what the latter will look like. Today, Google offers a standard view and auto-grouping “Categories,” like Promotions, Social, Updates, and Forums.
The Google Slides entry is also notable, with a mention of generating soundtracks in addition to images. The latter was shown off on stage last week, but the latter could leverage something like MusicLM to create background tracks for a presentation.
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