Joining the generative AI gold rush, Google last month announced plans to bring several AI-powered tools, collectively called Duet AI, to its Workspace office suite. These features will include automated project planning in Google Sheets, the ability to create images from text prompts in Google Slides, and an automated writing tool in Gmail and Google Docs called “Help Me Write.”
The AI tools in Slides and Sheets are not yet available, but Help Me Write is in limited preview; you can try it out in Google Docs or Gmail on the web by signing up for access to Workspace Labs with your Google account. (You’ll be put on a waitlist before being granted access.) Like the well-known ChatGPT, Help Me Write is a chatbot tool that generates written text based on prompts (instructions) that you give it.
Whether you’re a professional writer or someone who dreads having to write for your job, the potential of AI assistance for your writing tasks is appealing. Help Me Write can indeed write long passages of text that are reasonably readable. But its results come with caveats including factual errors, redundancy, and too-generic prose.
This guide covers how to use Help Me Write in both Google Docs and Gmail to generate and rewrite text, and how to overcome some of the tool’s shortcomings. Because it’s in preview status, keep in mind that there may be changes to its features, and the results it generates, when it’s finally rolled out to the public.
(On a meta note, no part of this article was written by Help Me Write. Many articles about AI include a “twist” in which the author reveals that what you’ve been reading was, in fact, written by an AI. That’s not the case here. A major reason is the question of copyright — who owns the words that are generated by AI, especially if its service is free for public use?)
Use Help Me Write to generate text
Once you’ve been granted access to Workspace Labs, start a new blank document in Docs. At the top of the document is a button that includes a pencil with a + sign and the words “Help me write.” Or, if you open an existing document, you’ll see a small button with the “pencil +” icon at the left edge of your document page. In Gmail, the same icon appears on the toolbar along the bottom of the compose window.
From left to right, the “Help me write” button as it appears in a new Google Doc, an existing Google Doc, and in Gmail. (Click image to enlarge it.)
Click this Help me write button. In Docs, the “Help me write” panel opens. In Gmail, a text entry bar appears at the bottom of the compose window.
Inside the panel or bar, you’ll see several suggestions for prompts — words that describe the subject and kind of writing you would like Help Me Write to generate — scroll through. These suggestions, such as “Pitch for a product that allows people to create holograms of themselves” or “An introduction for someone I met at the conference,”…
2023-06-15 11:00:03
Link from www.computerworld.com