Google LLC announced today that it’s making “prep work” for collaboration and creation easier for users of its cloud productivity tools in Workspace across Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drive through a deeper integration with Gemini as an artificial intelligence assistant.

Gemini, Google’s flagship large language model, received its most recent update major update in February with Gemini 3.1 Pro. The update introduced powerful reasoning capabilities using a mixture-of-experts architecture, allowing it to use tools, reason across large numbers of documents, and understand both images and audio.

With this recent update, Google introduced a new “Help me create” experience in Docs. Users can describe what they want to create and it will follow instructions and synthesize information by looking over Drive, Gmail, Chat and web sources to generate a fully formed draft.

For example, users could type up that they want to create a first draft of a campaign plan from an idea they have, based on previous successful campaigns. Gemini would go to work by looking through Drive and Gmail to pull in contacts and other relevant details to structure the document, apply styles and generate a fitting first draft.

Google also said Gemini could assist with cleaning up messy documents. When multiple collaborators work together on a single document, they can have different styles, voice and tone. In a single click, Gemini can adjust tone and unify writing style. The LLM analyzes the document and edits it to make tone and voice consistent.

During a demonstration, Google also showed how formatting can be copied from one document to another. Using Gemini, the AI assistant can take the structure and style of one document and copy it onto another, eliminating the need for additional file copies or tedious manual formatting.

Sheets becomes a data powerhouse

Google Sheets has always been the mainstay for project tracking, data entry and complex mathematics and finance. The problems that people face when using this tool have always been finding scattered data and getting it visualized or formatted correctly.

To address this problem, Google brought Gemini in to assist with building or editing entire spreadsheets through natural language. A user can describe what they need, Gemini then orchestrates gathering data, building multistep sheet designs from start to finish, builds complex calculations and finally displays outputs.

The AI has access to files, emails, chat and the web, so it can pull in data from myriad sources and show where it got the data, how it sourced it and even allow the user to adjust its parameters and iterate as it goes.

Even after a Sheet has been built, Google added “Fill with Gemini,” allowing users to auto-populate sections of the Sheet by selecting sections. Gemini will take a guess at what data should appear in cells by looking at adjacent cells and column titles and then pull in appropriate data.

Gemini is particularly adept at building complex Sheets that require multi-cell calculations and optimization problems or power visualization dashboards with complex formulas that change according to data input into the cells.

Slides for instant presentations

Creating a slide or presentations is now just as easy as writing a note to Gemini. Before, users had to develop Sides themselves, using assets, wording, data and creative decisions manually, but now Gemini has automated most of this process.

A single natural language prompt for Gemini and the AI assistant will automatically craft a slide for the deck including messaging ideas, layout, spacing and visual weight. It will match company branding and can even turn brainstorm sketches or tables into fully editable charts and diagrams.

Slides are just the start. Google also said the new update allows Gemini to generate entire presentations from scratch by describing what a user needs. By looking at Workspace data, Gemini can create a presentation, with multiple slides, all on-brand and with a complete narrative with fully editable layouts and assets.

Drive becomes a go-to AI-assisted resource

The primary usefulness of Drive is acting as storage and access for files. However, as users start to pull in many documents and files, it can become an overgrowth of stuff, like a hoarder’s nightmare of bric-a-brac and trivia.

Searching it might bring back individual useful files, but without thoughtful organization it’s not always a go-to for most people except as an archive.

With the addition of Gemini’s intelligence, Google said it can turn traditional keyword searches, which often return long lists of files, making searches tedious, into AI overviews. These overviews can help pull out more relevant files, provide complete answers with citations and make Drive a knowledge base instead of cold storage.

Now, Ask Gemini is part of Drive. This lets users ask questions about their Drive files, get detailed responses and understand how what they have stored might compare to content across Gmail, Calendar and Chat. Google said users control what sources are included, or narrow focus to specific folders or files to create personalized knowledge repositories.

These new experiences will be rolling out today to users, in English only, for users with Google AI Pro and Ultra plans. Access via other languages will come soon.

Image: Google