Gemini Will Appear in the Sidebar of Your Google Apps (If You Pay)
If you or your company pays for Workspace, you may have noticed Google’s AI integration with apps like Docs, Sheets, and Drive. The company has been pushing Gemini across its products since its big rebrand from “Bard” in February, and it looks like the train isn’t stopping anytime soon: Starting this week, you’ll now have access to Gemini via a sidebar in some of Google’s most used apps Workspace.
Google announced the change in a blog post on Monday , saying the new Gemini sidebar will be available in Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive and Gmail—the latter the company announced in a separate post . The sidebar is located to the right of the window and can be called up at any time using the blue Gemini button while working in these applications.
Google says the sidebar uses Gemini 1.5 Pro , an LLM the company released back in February equipped with a “longer context window and more advanced reasoning.” This longer context window should be useful when you ask Gemini to parse long documents or look at large data sets in Drive, as it allows LLM to process more information at once in any given query.
Now, if you’ve ever used generative artificial intelligence, especially from Google, this experience probably won’t shock you: when Gemini appears, you’ll see a fairly typical welcome screen in addition to a series of prompts for you to ask the bot. For example, when you open a sidebar in a Google Doc, Gemini can immediately offer you a summary of the document and then suggest possible prompts such as “Clarify,” “Suggest improvements,” or “Rephrase.” However, the hint field at the bottom of the panel is always available so that you can ask Gemini anything you want.
Here are some uses for Gemini in the sidebar that Google envisions:
-
Docs : help you write, summarize text, generate writing ideas, find content from other Google files.
-
Slides : Create new slides, create images for slides, summarize existing presentations.
-
Sheets : Track and organize your data, create tables, run formulas, get help with tasks in the app.
-
Drive : Summarize “one or two documents”, ask for basic information about a project, ask for a detailed report based on several files.
-
Gmail : Summarize a discussion, suggest responses to an email, give advice on how to write an email, ask about emails in your inbox or Drive.
None of these features are groundbreaking (Gemini has been generally available in Workspace since February), but according to Google, they’re now available in a convenient place when you use these apps. In fact, Google announced that Gmail for Android and iOS will also get Gemini, but not as a sidebar. But while the company is convinced that adding generative AI to its apps will have a positive impact on the end user, I’m not entirely convinced. After all, this is Google’s first major AI development since the company’s disastrous release of AI Reviews . I, for one, am curious if Gemini will invite me to reply to an email with instructions for adding glue to pizza.
As companies like Google continue to add new AI features to their products, we’re seeing weaknesses in real time: Do you want to trust a summary of a Gemini presentation in Slides or an important conversation in Gmail when the AI is still doing something? That? and treats them as facts ?
Who can try Gemini Sidebar in Google Apps
However, not everyone will see Gemini in their Workspace apps even when Google releases it. For now, the new Gemini Sidebar feature is only available to businesses purchasing the Gemini Business and Enterprise add-on, schools purchasing the Gemini Education and Education Premium add-on, and Google One AI Premium subscribers. If you don’t pay for Google’s top-tier subscription, and your company or school doesn’t pay for Gemini, you won’t see Google AI in Gmail. Depending on who you are, this can be good or bad.