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According to information provided earlier this week in Gmail and Documents, Google Workspace is branding its generative AI features with a pencil icon with a star in the top-left corner. (The actual pencil or pen is a generic icon that is currently utilized in a number of FABs, such as Compose in Gmail.)
Gmail (on a mobile device): FAB in the bottom-right corner, above your keyboard. A document with the heading “Help me write” and the subheads “Formalize, Elaborate, Shorter, Bulletize, I’m Feeling Lucky,” pops up. The gen AI emblem and the capability you chose remain in the top-left corner of the email as it is being made. Google Docs (desktop version): “Help me write” button in the form of a pill. A full-width text box for entering your prompt grows when you tap.
Together with the emblem, the colour scheme utilized throughout is more intriguing because it has a blueish-purple undertone. That is the background of the button and expanded text area in the Google Docs illustration. The created text starts out in that colour before changing to black. Similar to this, as it works, the blue “Create” button changes to “Creating…” with a pulsating background. The same thing applied to Gmail for Android.
Whilst the user interfaces displayed here are apparently less finished than Gmail and Documents, the “new era for AI and Google Workspace” features more instances of this. It has an intriguing tint, and the somewhat comical way the text loads hides the fact that generative AI literally takes a second to operate.
I had proposed that the business should call its AI features that customers voluntarily activate “Google Assistant” instead. Instead of implying that Gmail, Documents, etc. now have a separate AI product or service, Google is just directly identifying the generative AI capabilities with each product for the initial launch.
Microsoft is going in the other direction. The business is adding “Copilot” (a branding it has previously used in association with GitHub) to Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Outlook, and Teams after renaming the Office suite to “Microsoft 365” last year. It’s the same as labelling metaphorical software boxes with a “AI” sticker.
In the past, Google has avoided that flashier strategy with its Workspace products. Even though they are present in Gmail, Docs, and Chat, features like Smart Reply and Compose simply stand alone. It is quite appropriate given that Google doesn’t create a brand for its goods; instead, it labels them very simply after their primary function.
It will be interesting to observe which approach to generative AI in productivity apps becomes successful (i.e., draws in more users). Microsoft wants to make a statement and rev up its products, which are already widely utilized. By giving something a name, people automatically know what to call and credit it as. As an alternative, it assigns blame to users.
Google, on the other hand, is aiming for a more traditional stance by portraying the addition of next-generation AI tools as a continuation of how it improves its products to be useful. In that regard, once it is widely used and accepted, generative AI may merely represent an evolution rather than a revolution in the lengthy history of computers.
Google has stopped producing the Glass Enterprise Edition; nonetheless, I still think the name “Google Lens” is the most appropriate for Google’s smart glasses. This next-generation form factor’s major feature/differentiator will be visual search with an always-on AR overlay, thus highlighting that potential is a smart and audacious move.
In spite of the fact that the “Glass” has too much baggage to return, the name was nonetheless brilliant. The form factor is constantly associated with the “iPhone” brand, just like “Glass” does with smart glasses.
