Google Workspace now lets you use custom AI Gems directly in Docs, Gmail, more

Google Workspace users can now access Gems from the side panel of Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Drive, and Gmail. Previously, Gems could only be accessed from the Gemini app directly.

For anyone not familiar with Gems, they’re a more advanced feature in Gemini where you can make your own chatbots, powered by Gemini, with custom instructions. If you’re interested in learning more about them, check out my editorial from April, where I argue custom AI bots are the best thing about generative AI and how to create your own bots.

The decision to make Gems available across Google Workspace has the potential to significantly speed up people’s workflows if they’ve started using Gems already. If you’ve never made a Gem, Google has several pre-made ones including a Brainstormer, Writing editor, Coding partner, and Learning guide.

Google Workspace users can leverage Gems in an almost infinite number of ways. For example, imagine if you’re a teacher in whatever country and you have to make lesson plans for your class that must follow a certain structure, you can use natural language to program a gem to expect certain inputs from you (such as grade, subject, topic etc) and get an output that follows the required guidelines.

If you’re a journalist, you could create a gem to quickly strip out the key bits of news from a press release or if you’re a student you can create a bot to break down complicated subjects into something easier to understand. The possibilities are nearly endless and now the Gems you make are even more accessible.

Google mentioned that Gems can be accessed via the side panel of all supported Workspace applications and can be used across Workspace capabilities including @ mentioning, accessing files and folders, and more. If you need to create a Gem, you’ll still need to do that on the Gemini website.

To get started with Gemini in Google Workspace, just click the “Ask Gemini” (spark button) in the top-right corner. Google said that the Gems feature rollout is an extended rollout which means it might take more than 15 days to get the feature. Admins out there do not need to do anything and there are no specific admin controls in the side panel for Gems or Gemini.