Generative artificial intelligence is now everywhere: in academic papers, student essays, digital e-books, police reports, tech blogs, and many other places. With a few clicks and a well-chosen prompt, it's now incredibly easy to churn out thousands of words on almost any topic imaginable. Google wants to let users join this AI content creation boom by adding its Gemini chatbot-powered writing tools to Gmail, Google Docs, and other apps.
Currently, these features are only available if you or your organization pays for Google Workspace or subscribes to a Google One AI premium plan, but they may become available for personal accounts in the future. Here, we explain where this Gemini-powered writing assistance will appear, how it can be used, and how it can be deployed most effectively.
Gemini AI for Gmail
AI has been powering Gmail's Smart Reply and Smart Compose features for a few years now, but the addition of Gemini takes texting to a whole new level. When you start composing a new email in Gmail on the web, you'll see a little pen with a star in the bottom toolbar. Clicking on this will let you type out prompts for the entire email. As always, the more detailed your prompts are, the better the results will be.
Once Gemini has finished its thoughts, you can rank the results up or down with a thumb. You can click Insert to finalize the text and make any edits you like, or make changes by clicking the Refine button below. This button can help you, for example, to shorten a sentence, elaborate on something already set, or make it more formal.
I use Gemini to compose emails in Gmail. (Gizmodo)
These options for refining text are also available for email texts you've written in your head. Just click the pen icon, as you always have. From my testing, Gemini is actually most useful when shortening emails, especially long ones. However, you should still double-check to make sure you haven't missed anything important.
Being able to generate such clear, natural-sounding text is great, but you never know who you'd want to send AI-generated emails to. Probably not your friends or family. Maybe not your boss or coworkers. Maybe you could use AI to outsource boring administrative emails. But there's always the risk of hallucinations, and suddenly you're agreeing to pay double your usual price for broadband.
Gemini summarizes long Gmail conversation threads. (Gizmodo)
One of the assignments on my test was to write to the editors at Gizmodo telling them how great their magazine is and how much of a fan you are, having read it for over a decade. The responses were okay, up to a point, but rather stilted and boring, reading like a condensed average of a million thank you notes and thank you letters (which of course they all are).
Gemini appears as a “Summary this email” button at the top of email threads in Gmail, and can also list actionable items from an email thread via the Gemini button (top right). This actually works well and I think it's useful, but only if the email is important and missing a detail or two won't be a problem.
Gemini AI for Google Docs
Right now, in any Gemini-enabled Google Doc, as soon as you create a blank document, you'll see a (Help me write) prompt at the top. When you click on it, you can type the prompt and create text about anything you like. You could create the opening chapter of a novel, an agenda for a meeting, an explanation of how DNA works in the body, or anything else you need inspiration for.
The Gemini AI button (a little blue pen with a star) sits right next to the Comment and Emoji buttons and follows you around while you write. You can use it to insert short sentences or longer blocks of text whenever you want, or you can tell it to continue in the same style and tone as what's already on the page.
Gemini generates loads of text on a topic of your choice. (Gizmodo)
Gemini, ChatGPT, and Copilot often return the same generic text you're familiar with: My efforts to get Gemini to write a TV show pitch that “blends the best parts of Twin Peaks, Westworld, The Leftovers, and Presumed Innocent” led to the creation of “complex characters,” “tragic pasts,” and a small town where “reality is not at all what it seems” as you may have heard before.
As with Gmail, the most useful feature here is the Summarize and Rewrite feature: you can select text and then click the AI Pen button to adjust it, or use the Gemini Star button (top right corner) to get a summary of the document, paraphrase a particular block of text, or come up with a new idea based on what you've already written.
Gemini's overview and summarizing abilities are promising. (Gizmodo)
For writers, the option to quickly rewrite or rephrase short pieces of text makes Gemini even more useful; it's like a supercharged thesaurus. It's limited in generating large blocks of text, though, unless you're looking for a piece of writing that's pretty bland and forgettable (and quite likely to be full of errors, depending on what you're writing about). Also, keep in mind that Google Docs keeps track of revisions, and large blocks of text will appear out of nowhere next to your name…
Personally, I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d ask a generative AI to invent new writing for me, rather than writing and researching it myself. The technology has much more potential when it comes to summarizing and coming up with new ideas, and this is probably where it will establish itself as a writing assistant rather than a replacement for writers.
