Google is trying to prove the effectiveness of its AI assistant. Just days after showcasing customer success stories and integrating Google Gemini into Workspace, the tech giant has kept its momentum going. TechRepublic attended the invite-only Gemini at Work event at New York City’s industrial-chic Pier 57 office on September 26 to get a closer look at the AI assistant’s capabilities.
Gemini is best at summarizing, not so good at creativity
Demonstrations at the Gemini at Work event showed that Gemini performs best when humans have already defined the parameters of a project. Gemini for Workspace integrates seamlessly across the entire platform while remaining in one sidebar.
In any Workspace application, I can ask Gemini about pre-built company meetings, pitch decks, and emails provided by Google. Gemini is exceptionally effective at summarizing – and Google knows it. Pressing the Gemini star in Docs will generate a summary of the document without the user having to enter any prompts.
Analyzing meeting notes with Gemini works quite well, but Gemini struggles with questions that don’t immediately reference existing text. I was able to ask Gemini questions about the contents of an email from a specific customer, as the Google representative running the demo encouraged me to do. But asking Gemini “Which of these emails is most urgent?” Received no reply, even though many of the emails were non-urgent “Welcome to Gemini” messages and others were from my imaginary customers.
WATCH: Google’s AI overview positions Gemini as the ubiquitous search engine.
AI struggled with specificity. Google’s intended demo was a pitch deck about a coffee shop’s fall menu. I asked Gemini to draft some marketing copy for the coffee shop that specifically referenced elements of New York City life. The resulting copy was unclear. The city’s name was present but did not include any other landmarks or references to New York’s distinctive culture. Asking Gemini to condense the text to talk about Brooklyn’s Prospect Park area produced images of coffee in mugs instead of relevant results.
It often takes some effort to get the prompting right, but I don’t think human marketers with real-world knowledge of their customer base can get perfect projects out of Gemini. Google is aware of this. Disclaimers abound that Gemini is a creative writing tool, not an arbiter of facts. Many customer stories illustrate this point.
Gemini customers use AI as a starting point
Andrew Larson, chief technology and information security officer at accounting software company Finquary, was one of several customers testing Gemini. He said his company wants to leverage technology to “reduce our labor, all those mundane, less-thinking tasks.”
Their developers double-checked Gemini’s work and validated it themselves. Meanwhile, Gemini helps reduce repetitive or rote tasks and frees people up for “innovative or big light bulb moments,” Larson said.
Etsy’s engineering manager, Colin Wilkinson, said his team asked Gemini about top customer concerns, recurring issues, and how often they get tickets that need detail. This helps product teams respond to feedback faster.
“It’s like having a consultant, advisor, or advisor,” said Mark Cuban, a “Shark Tank” investor and recent co-founder of the pharmaceutical company Cost Plus Drugs. Cuban was the guest speaker at the event.
Aparna Pappu, VM and GM of Google Workspaces, interviews investor Mark Cuban at Google’s Pier 57 location in New York on September 26.
His view of working with AI was malleable, saying, “You can curse it, you can name it, it doesn’t matter.” Cuban presented AI as an alternative to hiring more people, with the added benefit that AI can talk back – a sobering look at the role of an assistant, perhaps.
Still, Google has a potentially lucrative field to fill, with 10 million existing Workspace customers potentially purchasing the Gemini add-on. Google wants to educate those potential customers as much as possible — many of the event attendees were executives or small business owners, some new to AI.
“It’s really important for the workforce of the future to know these skills,” said Aparna Pappu, VP and GM of Google Workspaces.
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