Gemini will turn your Google Chat into a neat summary

3 weeks ago

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Gemini will turn your Google Chat into a neat summary

If you step away from your computer or phone for a few minutes, you may return to a flood of notifications about new messages. If you use Google Chat, you no longer have to scroll through them all to find out what you missed, thanks to Google’s Gemini AI assistant. You can summon Gemini from the Google Chat sidebar and ask the AI to summarize the conversation and dive into the most important bits.

The new feature extends Gemini’s presence from other Google Workspace applications such as Docs and Drive to Google Chat. Clicking the “Ask Gemini” icon at the top of the Google Chat interface will bring up a chat window for the AI where you can ask what was said in group chats, direct messages, and rooms.

Asking the AI to ‘catch up with me’ will give you a full summary of the conversation, which you can request in bulleted form. If it is too short, you can also request a longer summary. You can also ask for more specific details, such as any help requests, key insights, or other decisions made in the thread. You can even ask questions about others’ tasks or what someone said about specific topics. The demo below shows how it works.

Google Chat Gemini — (Image credit: Google)

Gemini chat

Gemini can’t search your entire conversation history, only the current view. It is also limited to Google Chat. That means there are no emails or files in Google Drive, despite Gemini being present and accessing those applications under other circumstances. Google claims this is intentional, as it keeps the focus on the current chat in context without pulling in irrelevant information. Additionally, tightly restricting data sources reduces Gemini’s risk of hallucinations. You also can’t summon Gemini in Google Chat without a subscription to Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education, or Education Premium.

Even with these (likely temporary) availability restrictions, bringing Gemini to Google Chat fits with how Google is working to integrate Gemini across all its platforms and services. That includes Gemini extensions to take over the role of Google Assistant with Google Messages, Maps, and pretty much everything Android does.