In late October, Google said it would start testing the Duet AI side panel in Workspace Labs, and we now have a closer look at what it can do.

Original 12/20/23: Google first teased the persistent side panel at I/O in May and demoed it again in August as a “contextual, real-time AI collaborator.” It’s launched from a new icon, which animates when you hover over it, next to your account avatar in the top-right corner of Workspace (web) apps.

It opens as an inline column at the right, and you can expand it. Google does not appear to be testing the side panel in Gmail just yet.

Update 1/4/24: The Duet AI side panel in Gmail lets you:

Summarize email threads with “more than 2 replies”: “Summarize this email,” “Create a list of action items for me based on this email,” and “Explain this email to me like I’m 5 years old”

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’re able to right-click on a document and ask Duet AI questions about the file, including:

“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?”

After receiving a response, you can click “Sources” to “view which files and documents were used to generate the response.”

Instead of right-clicking, you can also open Duet AI, enter “@title of the document,” and add a prompt. Duet can also summarize whole projects and accept broad prompts like “Help me understand our team’s 2024 strategy.”

In Google Docs, you can use the Duet AI side panel to:

Summarize: “Summarize this document,” “Explain this document like I’m 5 years old,” and have Duet just summarize text you highlight

Write or rewrite: “Write an announcement email about a new feature” and “Make the announcement more fun”

Create images: “Create an image of a dog with glasses”

Reference files from Drive to generate responses in Docs: “What are the main points of: Meeting Notes: Core Team sync”

Reference Gmail emails: “Catch me up on the latest Monthly Review emails”

In Google Sheets:

Summarize

Create tables: “Create a table for a full day team event,” “Create a trip plan for a vacation in a national park,” and “Create a social media tracker for marketing”

There’s also the ability to refine: “Add another 5 rows of different activities” and “Add a column for cost”

Create 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”

In Google Slides:

Create images based on slide content: “Suggest images for this slide”

Generate a new slide: “Create a slide about how to optimally train for a marathon” or “Create a slide about how to utilize the SCRUM framework”

Summarize presentations: “Summarize this presentation in 3 sentences” and “Create a slide that celebrates a colleague’s work anniversary”

Add 9to5Google to your Google News feed.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.