Google Unveils New Chat Experience with Duet AI

Google Chat is the latest app to benefit from the new Duet AI in Google Workspace. Google’s alternative to Slack and Microsoft Teams will let users chat with Duet AI and ask the AI assistant to summarize documents, recap previous conversations, and more.

“With Duet AI in Chat as a real-time collaboration partner, you can get updates, insights, and proactive suggestions across your Google Workspace apps. We plan for Duet AI to answer complex queries by searching across your messages and files in Gmail and Drive, summarize documents shared in a space, and provide a recap of missed conversations,” the Google Chat team explained today.

In Google Chat, Duet AI will also be able to help users create apps with Duet AI in AppSheet, Google’s no-code platform. Google Chat also integrates with various third-party apps, and it’s adding a dedicated section for apps in the conversation list.

Google is bringing other updates to Google Chat including a visual refresh and a unified conversation list that brings together direct messages and spaces (which are the equivalent to Teams channels). Early next year, Google Chat will also get a new intelligent view that will prioritize messages based on your usage of the app.

Google is also increasing the maximum number of users in a space from 50,000 to 500,000 members. Moreover, Workspace admins will be able to add a legacy Google Group to a space in Google Chat later this year.

With Google Chat, the company aims to create a versatile central communication hub for Google Workspace customers, but this is a highly competitive area. Just like Google is bringing its Duet AI to its Workspace apps, the Microsoft 365 Copilot is also coming to Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps, though it won’t be free.