Why hire more employees when you could simply offload team management tasks to a Google AI Teammate? At this year’s Google I/O event, the tech giant (briefly) drew attention to its somewhat controversial vision of the future of AI/human collaboration.
Sometime in the future, rather than just interacting with Google’s Gemini AI online and in your workspace apps, you’ll be able to use it to create an additional synthetic staff member.
Google says this virtual teammate will be able to handle some of the time-consuming tasks that harm productivity on a daily basis. It will be able to search through lengthy chat threads, monitor project progress and more. So, what does this mean for the future of work?
Here’s everything you need to know about Google AI Teammate and the future of AI/human collaboration.
What is Google AI Teammate?
Google AI Teammate is essentially an AI bot that acts like another coworker in your Workspace collaboration tools. At a glance, it seems almost exactly the same as Microsoft’s “Team copilot”, introduced by the competitor at Microsoft Build 2024.
Basically, the tool can pool shared documents, comments, emails, chats, and information from throughout Workspace and use it to “collaborate” with staff. It might sound like a futuristic concept, but it really just gives people another way to interact with Gemini, Google’s proprietary AI model.
Throughout the I/O tech conference, Google demonstrated a clear focus on the “Gemini Era”. Not only is it upgrading its Gemini models, but it’s also embedding them into more tools, from a sidebar in your Workspace apps, to Gmail and mobile applications.
Google AI Teammate basically just takes the functionality of Gemini in these spaces and embeds it into a “virtual teammate” who can sit in on your conversations and essentially work alongside you.
According to Aparna Pappu, Google Workspace’s GM and Vice President, AI teammates are just one of the ways Google is experimenting with giving people different ways to work with AI.
It’s not an unusual concept, particularly now that Microsoft is taking the same path. The question is, will AI teammates really augment and support the workforce or just create more opportunities for business leaders to replace human beings with bots?
What Can Google AI Teammate Do?
Unlike Microsoft, which shared plenty of examples of what its “Team Copilot” would be able to do in Office apps, Google only showed us a basic presentation at I/O 2024. The company talked about the solution building a “collective memory” of all the work employees do together in Workspace, based on the apps, chats, and channels companies give it access to.
At a glance, it doesn’t seem like working with “AI teammate” will be that much different to simply chatting with Gemini in your Workspace apps. The only real difference is that the new model embeds Gemini into a specific Gemini account that you can personalize and work alongside.
Here are some examples of what you should be able to do with AI teammate when it rolls out.
Create a Customized AI Staff Member
One of the main things I noticed when reviewing the announcement of Google’s new AI teammate is that the company seems to be looking for ways to humanize AI assistants. When you set up your AI teammate, you can give it a custom name (Google chose “Chip”), assign it a job role, and even provide it with a description of what it’s supposed to do.
Basically, you can “design” the extra staff member you need to help you with various tasks, from summarizing content threads, to keeping track of conversations. Your AI bot can have its own Google profile, and you customize it over time, giving it more information and insights.
Give Your Teammate Access to Data and Apps
Just like a human team member, Google AI teammate can be given access to various tools in your Workspace, such as Google Meet and Chat. In the I/O presentation, Google showed its “Chip” bot having access to a specific group chat of people connected to the I/O demo.
Once it has access to specific chats and data, your AI teammate can sort through all the information shared there to answer questions in seconds. For instance, you can ask it whether a specific task has already been approved, or ask for a status update, without browsing through channels yourself.
The more files, threads, chats, and emails your bot has access to, the more it can build a collective memory of everything happening in your organization.
Chat with Your AI Team Member
Throughout the Google I/O demo, the tech giant mostly drew attention to how you can interact with your AI teammate within your everyday conversations. Honestly, I don’t see this as being very different to just accessing Google Gemini in the sidebar of Google Chat, when this feature becomes available later this year.
Really, it just removes a step from your AI interactions, allowing your bot to lurk inside of your chat rooms, rather than sitting in a sidebar. Notably, though, it does seem like this bot will be able to flag issues when it notices them. For instance, if people start talking about an upcoming project that’s been canceled, the bot can remind them of the current status of the project.
Plus, embedding a Google AI teammate into your chat system does mean that people in a team can work with the bot at the same time. Rather than everyone asking questions separately, everyone can work simultaneously, with a bot to guide them.
Give Your Teammate Specific Tasks
Right now, it’s not certain exactly what kind of “tasks” you’ll be able to assign to your Google AI teammate. The feature is still in its early stages. However, the demo did show that after granting the bot access to different Google apps, you can give it a specific job.
For instance, in the demo, the AI teammate was instructed to monitor and track the progress of specific projects, analyze data, and facilitate team collaboration. That’s all pretty similar to how Microsoft plans to use its “Team Copilot.”
Team Copilot, which will integrate with tools like Microsoft Planner, Loop, and Teams, can help with project management, issue tasks to team members, and monitor deadlines. It seems likely that Google AI Teammate will be able to accomplish similar things.
When Will Google AI Teammate Be Available?
Unfortunately, if you’re keen to experiment with a new AI staff member, you might have a while to wait. After the tech demo, Google simply told people to “stay tuned” for more updates on when it would be rolling out to Workspace. We also didn’t get any information about which AI add-on plans AI Teammate will be included in, or whether it will require a separate subscription.
For now, Google says it still needs to figure out how to give its ChatGPT rival its own presence in Workspace. In the meantime, however, it did announce other upcoming Gemini solutions that seem to have similar functionality.
For instance, Google’s “Gems” will be rolling it in the months ahead, allowing companies to create their own personalized Gemini assistants. Similar to the AI Teammate, you’ll be able to tell a Gem exactly what you want it to do. Once again, Microsoft seems to be introducing a similar feature with its Copilot Agents, which allows users to customize AI agents using Copilot Studio.
The main difference between these “Gems” and AI Teammate seems to be that Gems will have a less “humanized” presence in your Workspace suite.
Google’s Vision for Human/AI Collaboration
Google has clearly seen excellent results from its investments in generative AI so far. Millions of people worldwide have already experimented with Google’s Gemini chatbot; the AI features in mobile and web apps and even AI in Gmail.
In fact, Aparna Pappu drew attention to how customers have commended Gemini’s ability to improve engagement and participation in meetings with real-time captions and automatic language detection. As Gemini becomes more deeply integrated into Google’s Workspace apps, it seems as though day-to-day interactions with AI will become more commonplace.
Certainly, Google is keen to make generative AI a more natural and consistent part of our lives. At I/O 2024, it introduced a range of AI innovations, from Project Alpha, to Project Astra, the “future of AI assistants” in mobile phones and smart glasses.
But what does the proliferation of AI in the workplace really mean for today’s human teams? People are already concerned about AI replacing jobs, and interacting with an AI “teammate” on a regular basis will likely only emphasize this concern.
On the one hand, having an AI agent around to help keep collaboration on track, manage projects, and scroll through your conversations for you seems helpful. It definitely introduces a future where we can all work more collaboratively with intelligent tools.
On the other hand, there are hurdles to overcome. Not everyone will feel comfortable working side-by-side with an AI bot. Many of us will also want to avoid actually taking instructions from an AI teammate too. For now, it remains to be seen whether AI teammates will become a handy office buddy or the kind of colleague you can’t wait to get rid of.