Google Meet has upgraded its service with AI note-taking and translation capabilities — although it requires an extra subscription cost.
Unveiled at this week’s Google Cloud Next, “Take notes for me” is now in public preview and allows users to engage with the conversation rather than having to manual take down notes or minutes.
Meanwhile, “Translate For Me” is coming in June and will automatically detect and translate captions in Meet. This includes support for 69 languages (equal to 4,600 language pairs), assisting users to feel more confident and connected to their colleagues, regardless of language.
“Workspace customers can already turn on translated captions during video calls and select their preferred language, helping Meet users around the world easily communicate,” said Aparna Pappu, Vice President and General Manager at Google Workspace.
Translate for me in Meet, coming in June, will automatically detect and translate captions into your preferred language. With translate for me, we’re adding translated caption support for 52 new languages, bringing the total number of supported languages to 69.”
Later in 2024, Google will launch automatic translation of messages and on-demand conversation summaries in Google Chat.
These features will be available in a new AI Meetings and Messaging add-on, which costs $10 per user per month and can be added to select Workspace plans.
Google’s New AI Security Add-On
Google’s AI Security solution was also unveiled at this week’s Google Cloud Next.
This solution empowers IT teams to automatically categorise and safeguard sensitive files across the entire company’s Google Drive. Leveraging privacy-preserving AI models trained on organisation-specific data, it allows ongoing assessment, classification, and protection of both existing and newly uploaded files in Drive. This functionality extends to all employees, including frontline workers, ensuring comprehensive data security and compliance measures are consistently applied.
“This add-on lets IT teams automatically identify, classify and protect sensitive files company-wide in Google Drive,” Pappu explained. “It uses privacy-preserving AI models that can be trained using data unique to your organization, enabling continuous evaluation, classification and protection of existing and new files in Drive.”
AI Security is available for select Workspace plans for $10 per user, per month.
Additionally, Google is expanding Data Loss Prevention (DLP) controls and classification labels to Gmail, now available in beta. The vendor also aims to fortify the defense of users’ most critical data against potential threats from quantum computers by introducing experimental support for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in client-side encryption, in collaboration with partners such as Thales and Fortanix.
What Else Has Happened At Google Cloud Next?
Google Workspace also launched Vids, an AI-powered video creation app singularly designed for enterprise use cases.
Vids joins Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides in the Workspace service, with full interoperability between the apps. It intends to support businesses in producing video for collaboration and productivity purposes—all within their browser rather than a separate platform.
Google stresses that it’s been designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind, with no prior experience or expertise with video production software being necessary. Example use cases Google highlights include developing a product pitch, updating your team, creating a training video, celebrating a team or coworker achievement, or breaking down a complex concept.
“Now, everyone can be a great storyteller through video with Google Vids, a new AI-powered video creation app for work,” said Pappu. “Vids is your video, writing, production, and editing assistant, all in one. It can generate a storyboard that you can easily edit, and after choosing a style, it pieces together your first draft with suggested scenes from stock videos, images, and background music.”
