Generative AI is now nearly ubiquitous, appearing in academic papers, student essays, digital e-books, police reports, technology blogs, and many other places. Now, it’s easy to write thousands of words on any topic imaginable with just a few clicks of the mouse and carefully chosen prompts – and Google is keen to help users participate in this AI-powered content creation boom, adding a new feature powered by Its supported writing tools. Gemini chatbot Gmail, Google Docs, and other apps.
Note that currently, these features are only available if you or your organization pays for Google Workspace or if you sign up for the Google One AI Premium plan, but it’s likely they’ll trickle down to individual accounts in the future. Here’s where this Gemini-powered writing aid comes in, how you can use it, and how it’s best deployed.
Gemini AI in Gmail
Artificial intelligence has been present in Gmail for several years, including features such as smart replies and smart writing, but the addition of Gemini takes text writing to a whole new level. Start composing a new email in Gmail on the web, and you’ll see a small pen with a star next to it on the bottom toolbar: click this button and you can enter a prompt for the entire email. As usual, the more detailed the tips, the better the results.
Once Gemini has finished thinking, you can sort the results “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” You can click insert Accept the text and add any edits you like, or you can click refine Use the buttons below to make changes – for example, it will help you shorten your prose, elaborate on what has been set, or make it more formal.
These options for refining text are also available for email text that you write in your own mind – just click on the pen icon as before. Based on the testing I’ve done, this is actually where Gemini is most useful, especially when it comes to shortening lengthy emails. However, you still need to check them carefully to make sure they don’t miss anything important.
Being able to produce such clear, natural text is an impressive feat, but it can be hard to know who you want to send your AI-generated email to. Surely not friends or family? Probably not your boss or co-workers either. Maybe AI can be used to outsource the boring admin emails? But since there’s always a risk of hallucination, you might find yourself suddenly agreeing to pay twice as much for broadband.
One of my test prompts was “Write a letter to the editor of Gizmodo and say what a great publication it is and what a loyal fan I am, having read it for over a decade.” In a way, the replies were okay, but rather stilted and boring – like they were the condensed and averaged result of a million thank you notes and thank you notes (which of course is how this all works).
Gemini is also Summarize this email button at the top of a Gmail email thread, it can also list actionable items in an email thread via the Gemini button (upper right corner). This actually works well, and I think it’s helpful – as long as your email isn’t important enough, missing a detail or two will be.
Gemini AI in Google Docs
For current Gemini-enabled Google Docs, once you create a blank document, you’ll see help me write Hint, right at the top. Click this button and you can enter prompts to generate any text you like: the opening chapter of a novel, a meeting agenda, an explanation of how DNA works in the body… whatever inspiration you need.
The Gemini AI button (the little blue pen 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 the content already on the page.
A lot of the time, you’ll get the same generic text you’re used to from Gemini, ChatGPT, and Copilot. My efforts to get Gemini to write pitches for a TV show that “combines the best bits of Twin Peaks, Westworld, Earthbound and Presumed Innocent led to – You’ve Might Have Heard This Before Some of the phrases – created a town with “complex characters”, “a tragic past” and “reality is not what it seems”.
As with Gmail, the summary and rewrite features are probably the most useful here. You can select text and click the AI Pen button to refine it, and you can use the Gemini star button (located in the upper right corner) to get a summary of the document, reword certain blocks of text, or come up with new ideas as needed about what you’ve already written past content.
For writers, the option to quickly rewrite or rephrase small passages of text makes Gemini even more helpful—sort of like a supercharged thesaurus. It has its limitations for generating large chunks of text, though, unless you’re looking for writing that’s fairly bland and forgettable (and likely full of errors, depending on what you’re writing). Keep in mind that Google Docs keeps a revision history that will show a lot of text popping up next to your name…
Personally, I can’t imagine a scenario where I would ask a generative AI to invent new words for me, and I wouldn’t enjoy writing and researching myself. The technology holds more promise when it comes to summarizing and coming up with new ideas, and perhaps that’s where it can find its niche: a writing assistant rather than a replacement for writers.
