How (and when) to use Gemini AI in Gmail and Google Docs

Generative artificial intelligence is now virtually ubiquitous, finding its way into academic papers, student essays, digital e-books, police reports, tech blogs, and many other places. It is now very easy to produce thousands of words on virtually any topic imaginable with just a few clicks and well-chosen prompts – and Google wants to help its users participate in this boom in AI content production by adding writing tools based on its Gemini Chatbot in Gmail, Google Docs, and other apps.

Note that these features are currently only available if you or your organization pay for Google Workspace or are subscribed to a Google One AI Premium plan, but they may be extended to personal accounts in the future. Here’s where this Gemini-powered writing aid is appearing, how you can use it, and how to best leverage it.

Gemini AI in Gmail

AI has been around in Gmail for a few years now, in features like Smart Reply and Smart Compose, but the addition of Gemini takes copywriting to a whole new level. Start composing a new email in Gmail on the web, and you’ll see a little pencil with a star next to it in the bottom toolbar: click that, and you can type in a prompt for your entire email. As usual, the more detailed the prompt, the better the results.

Once Gemini has finished its deliberations, you can rate the results with a thumbs up or thumbs down. You can click Insert to accept the text and make the desired changes, or click on the Refine Click the button below to make changes. For example, you can shorten the text, elaborate on what has already been written, or make it more formal.

These text-refining options can also be used for email text you’ve written with your own mind – just click the pencil icon as before. Based on the testing I’ve done, this is actually where Gemini is most useful, especially when shortening long emails. However, you’ll still need to double-check to make sure you haven’t missed anything important.

The ability to generate clear and natural-sounding text in this way is an impressive feat, but it’s hard to say who you’d want to send an AI-generated email to. Surely not a friend or family member? Probably not your boss or colleagues either. Perhaps AI could be used to outsource boring administrative emails? But since hallucinations are always a risk, you might suddenly find that you’ve agreed to pay double the price for your broadband.

One of my test prompts was, “Write to the editor of Gizmodo and tell them what a great publication it is and what a huge fan I am, having read it for over 10 years.” The responses were fine to a certain extent, but rather stilted and boring—as if they were the condensed and averaged results of a million thank-you notes and letters of appreciation (which is how it works, of course).

Gemini also appears as Summarize this email button at the top of email threads in Gmail, and it can also list actionable items from email threads via the Gemini button (top right). This actually works well, and I can imagine it being helpful — as long as your emails aren’t so important that it’s a bad thing if a detail or two is missing.

Gemini AI in Google Docs

As it currently looks in Google Docs with Gemini enabled, as soon as you create a blank document, you will be presented with a Help me write Prompt at the top. Click on it, and you can type prompts to create text about anything you want: opening chapters of novels, meeting agendas, explanations of how DNA works in the body… whatever you need for inspiration.

The Gemini AI button (the little blue pencil with a star next to it) follows you as you write, right next to the comment and emoji buttons. You can use it to insert short sentences or longer blocks of text at any time—and you can even ask it to continue in the same style and tone as what’s already on the page.

Often, you’ll get the same generic text you’ve come to expect from Gemini, ChatGPT, and Copilot. My efforts to get Gemini to write a pitch for a TV show that “would combine the best parts of Twin Peaks, Westworld, The Leftovers, and Presumed Innocent” resulted in – and you may have heard some of these phrases before – the creation of “complex characters,” a “tragic past,” and a small town where “reality isn’t quite what it seems.”

As with Gmail, the summarizing and rewriting features are perhaps most useful here. You can select text before clicking the AI ​​Pen button to refine it, and you can use the Gemini Star button (in the top right corner) to get summaries of documents, reword specific blocks of text, or come up with new ideas based on what you’ve already written.

For writers, Gemini is more helpful because of its ability to quickly rewrite or rephrase small chunks of text – a bit like a supercharged thesaurus. However, it has its limitations when it comes to generating large blocks of text, unless you’re looking for text that’s rather boring and forgettable (and potentially full of errors, depending on what you’re writing about). And remember that Google Docs keeps a revision history that shows large blocks of text that appear out of nowhere next to your name…

Personally, I can’t imagine a scenario where I would ever ask a generative AI to invent a new text for me that I wouldn’t rather write and research myself. The technology is more promising when it comes to summarizing and generating new ideas, and perhaps that’s where it will find its place: as a writing assistant rather than a replacement for a writer.