Duet AI side panel appearing in Gmail, Google Drive, and Docs for more testers

The Duet AI side panel that Google first showed off at I/O 2023 in May is now entering wider testing via the Workspace Labs program for free accounts. 

This “contextual, real-time AI collaborator” appears on the web next to your profile image. Tapping opens a side panel that lets you chat with Duet AI, which has not been renamed to Gemini yet. For personal Google Accounts, it will soon be part of the Google One AI Premium plan.

More users enrolled in the Workspace Labs program are starting to see it after visiting the apps online today:

In Gmail, you can use the Duet AI side panel to open an email on the left and then type “Summarize email threads” or even “Explain this email to me like I’m 5 years old.” Other capabilities include:  

• Suggest reply options: “Write an announcement email for the launch of Project Clover” and “Create a thank you note to a colleague for their work on Project Clover”
• Find information from previous emails: This includes “reservations, flights, packages, and other emails.” For example, “When is my package arriving?” and “What time is my next flight?”
• Find information from Google Drive files: “What are the main points of the weekly team meeting notes from my documents?” and “Summarize my document for Project Clover.”

In Google Drive, you can also right-click on a document to find a new “Ask Duet AI” option:

• “Summarize the key points” 
• “Summarize this file for me in bullet points”
• “Who wrote the Project B design doc?”
• “When is our contract with Vendor A expiring?”
• “How many customer sign-ups did we get for this test application?”

The side panel in Google Docs lets you summarize, re/write, generate images, “reference files from Drive to generate responses in Docs,” and reference Gmail emails — “Catch me up on the latest Monthly Review emails.” 

Duet AI in Google Sheets lets you summarize, create tables, and formulas — “Create a formula that divides goals by games” and “Create a formula to find cell C1 in range D:G and output value in column G.”

Finally, in Google Slides, you can create images, generate new slides, and summarize presentations using the Duet AI side panel, which can be expanded to take up half the screen in all apps but Gmail.