Gmail adding voice input, Gemini for Google Chat, Meet ‘Translate for me,’ & more

Besides Vids, Google Workspace is getting a slew of new features and Gemini capabilities at Cloud Next 2024.

Google is updating Help me write in mobile Gmail with voice prompting and input that lets you “send emails easily when you’re on the go.” Meanwhile, an “instant polish” feature will “convert rough notes to a complete email with one-click.” Google shared today that “70% of enterprise users who use Help Me Write in Docs or Gmail end up using Gemini’s suggestions.”

These new experiences will be available to Gemini Enterprise and Gemini Business customers, as well as Google One AI Premium subscribers

Google Docs is adding a tabs feature that “can organize information in a single document instead of linking to multiple documents or searching through Drive to find what you’re looking for.”

Additionally, Docs is getting support for full-bleed cover images at the top, with both those features entering general availability in the coming weeks. 

These features will be available to all Docs users in the coming weeks.

Google Sheets is getting a tables feature “does the heavy lifting to format and organize data with a sleek design.” 

Select a template from our new set of building blocks — 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.

Gemini is coming to Google Chat to summarize conversations and answer questions. On the web, it also appears as a side panel. Chat is also getting automatic message translation later this year, while Google is increasing spaces capacity to 500,000 members. 

Google Meet is adding “Translate for me” to “automatically detect and translate captions” in 52 new languages for a total of 69, or 4,600 language pairs. Meanwhile, Take notes for me is in preview. At Cloud Next 2024, Google announced that Gemini in Chat and Meet will be available as part of a new AI Meetings and Messaging add-on for enterprise that costs $10 per user/month. 

Google also announced a similarly priced AI Security add-on 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.

You also get DLP controls and classification labels in Gmail, as well as experimental support for post-quantum cryptography (PQC).