Google is ready to help you write, but we’d rather write for you. At Google I/O this week, the search giant announced it would be adding new generative AI capabilities to its workspace tools such as Docs, Gmail, Sheets, and Slides.I signed up for Google Workspace Labs (it’s called Beta), got off the waiting list today (it must have been my SAT score), and decided that the main tool would be[Help Me Write]I had a chance to peruse the button now. Generate the text from scratch or completely rewrite the copy with your own voice.
the keynote and Subsequent blog postGoogle has talked about adding image creation to slides and data analytics information to spreadsheets, but the only features that seem available at the moment are Docs and Gmail’s ‘help me write ” button. This feature currently has some usefulness for people who are not good at wordsmithing or are too lazy to piece together a few sentences themselves, but like any other AI tool, it can be used to or leave gibberish text. It’s common that it’s useless. Unfortunately, this is a perfect tool for students who want to forge book reports, or writers who want to plagiarize someone else’s work. And worst of all, it doesn’t live up to its name because instead of helping you improve your writing, it silences your voice and replaces your work with its own.
The “Help me write” button appears as a floating pen icon in the left rail of Gdocs and at the bottom of the compose window in Gmail. I’ve tested it primarily with Gdocs, but it works equally well with the compose window. Clicking the button brings up a violet dialog box that allows you to create a new text writing prompt. Enter the prompts and click Create. The system then displays the text and you can click “Insert” to insert it into your article, or “Tweak” to let the AI modify it slightly or “Recreate” it.
First, I asked him to write me a letter stating that I was quitting my job immediately. It was both generic and hallucinogenic. It said everything you would expect in a resignation letter that I had a good time and learned a lot from the company, but at the same time I accepted a position at another company. It was also written. Most people don’t quit their jobs without what’s next, but this is a point I didn’t elaborate on.
Likewise, when I asked them to “write me a letter applying for a job as an editor at Tom’s Hardware,” they wrote a ton of details about my experience, saying that I had over 10 years of experience. , my previous roles were: Editor of PC Magazine. I have over 10 years of experience with him, but never worked for PC Magazine. I don’t think the bot even tried to search the web for my actual experience.
Instead of making things up, bots may (wisely) leave important details placeholders. The resignation letter used the word specific areas as the name of the manager, the name of the company, the final date, and a place to list the details. However, these blanks were not marked to fill in blanks (e.g. Company Name) Also, it was not enclosed in parentheses (e.g. [Company Name]). I am 100 percent sure that many people will use “Help Me Write” to write important letters and neglect to replace the placeholder text with actual details. Never ask him to write you a farewell letter.
Clicking the Adjust button brings up a menu where you can choose to regenerate the text as either ‘formalized’, ‘shortened’, ‘elaborated’ or ‘paraphrased’. Select “Details” to get a little more detailed information. For example, when I rewrote my farewell letter, her two paragraphs added hallucinogenic details about the author and his girlfriend meeting at a party last year, taking a long walk, and watching a movie. was Selecting the “Short” option cut my goodbye letter to the point, leaving him only two sentences.
do homework for you
Good news for students who want to cheat on their homework. The ‘Help Me Write’ feature also generates an essay targeted at a specific grade level so it sounds like it was written by a younger child. For example, when I asked them to write a reading report on “The Wrinkles of Time” at the 5th grade level, they provided an excellent summary. When I asked for a book review at the 1st grade level, the content was a little longer and more detailed.
There seems to be a limit to what you can get no matter what you ask. I asked him to write a 5,000-word essay on Abraham Lincoln and why he is the greatest president ever. Instead, I received a tight 397-word paper with bulleted points. But, to my credit, it understands the subject and delivers factual, thematic prose.
I also tried to get the bot to write my master’s thesis with the prompt, “Write your master’s thesis on Shakespeare’s comedies and how they reflect the political tensions of the time.” While a master’s thesis is typically tens of thousands of words with many footnotes, this one was only 245 words and contained no academic research. There were, however, some superficial but justifiable allegations, such as that Dogberry’s character in “Much Ado About Nothing” was a critique of real-life constables.
I’m wondering if many schools that use Google Docs as their student’s official documentation tool have the ability to disable the “help me write” feature on student accounts. It’s pretty bold for Google to build a powerful cheating feature into a product it regularly sells to school districts.
Web information cannot be used
Many modern LLMs can get their input from the web, so you can feed them URLs and display prompts based on them. But to my great detriment, Google Workspace’s Duet AI was unable to capture the data I entered.
For example, I sent them the URL of a job posting and asked them to write a cover letter for that job. But I got an error message saying it can’t be done. This is a shame as you will need such specific information to get the most out of this tool.
Rewriting existing text
You can rewrite the text by highlighting the text and clicking the “Help Me Write” button. This can take the form of a summary or change the content type from an essay to a letter.
I took text from a few articles I wrote recently (a review of the Lenovo Yoga 9i laptop and a recent news article about OpenAI’s Shap-E model) and pasted it into Google Docs.Then highlight them and[Help Me Write]clicked. I was offered the opportunity to formalize, abbreviate, refine, paraphrase, or enter custom prompts.
For the Yoga 9i review, I chose Rephrase and Google’s AI returned a much shorter version of the review, mostly bulleted. My review he was 2,600 words, while the “paraphrased” version was only 122 words. Once the sample text was displayed, I had the option to click “Replace” to replace the original text entirely, or to paraphrase, shorten, or elaborate. output.
I then highlighted the text of the Shap-E article and asked Help Me Write to convert it to an email. In fact, this article turned into a politely worded email informing readers about the new 3D model tool. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to automatically open Gmail or put a copy of the email into the message compose.
We also highlighted Shap-E articles and asked Google to select 5 headlines with up to 80 characters each. The results were fine. My original headline was “His Shap-E model in OpenAI creates 3D objects from text or images” and his five suggested headlines were very similar to that.
However, even though I requested the headline, Google only gave me the option to replace the entire article with its output. There was no way to just say, “Insert this heading at the top.” This epitomizes Google’s biggest AI problem.
Please help me write or is it suitable for me?
The biggest problem with Google’s Help Me Write feature is that it doesn’t help you write, instead it tries to start from scratch or replace the text with your own text. This tool does not give advice on how to improve existing text. When I asked what they thought of my article, they responded with an error message. This is because it was not designed as an editor. Designed as an alternative tool for lighters.
The quality of the writing is very basic at the moment, so it’s not suitable for doing anything more than the basics. Unfortunately, the basics aren’t good enough for kids to cheat on school assignments, for someone to send a cover letter over the phone, or for someone who really wants to plagiarize an article to copy it into Gdocs and ask the AI to rewrite it. maybe. for them.
A really helpful AI co-pilot will evaluate your writing, make suggestions for specific sections of your text, and let you choose which ones to accept or reject. A really useful tool will also ask you follow-up questions instead of making the details out of the blue. If I ask you to write a cover letter and you don’t know anything about me, ask questions so I can get the job done. But like many AI products we test, Google Workspace AI and its Help Me Write feature are designed to keep you on the wheel, even if it means driving over a cliff.
