Google will ‘soon’ start testing Duet AI side panel in Workspace Labs

Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet today feature single-function AI features like Help me write and image generation. Google will soon start testing the Duet AI side panel. Ahead of that, the company is updating its “Google Workspace Labs Privacy Notice and Terms to better protect your privacy and data.”

As a side panel, Duet AI is described as being a “contextual, real-time AI collaborator.” It’s launched from a new icon to the left of your account avatar in the top-right corner of Workspace (web) apps. This opens a chat UI that lets you prompt Duet to summarize emails and documents, as well as create presentations. It was first teased at I/O in May, while Google demoed it again at Cloud Next in August.

Today’s privacy and ToS changes — communicated via email this evening — are meant to “clarify how data will be handled” when Duet AI takes on this broader role. Google is particularly emphasizing how your emails, documents, and spreadsheets “will not be seen by human reviewers or used for product improvement unless it has been aggregated and/or pseudonymized.” 

A help article lists what data Google collects: 

• Your prompts
• User-provided input, such as highlighted text or explicitly referenced Workspace content provided as part of your prompt
• Google-selected input, which includes Workspace content, such as your docs and emails, that Google may automatically process to generate a document summary or to provide you with personalized generated content, for example
• Generated output
• Refinements to prompts, input, or generated output
• Feedback

Google says to “not include sensitive, confidential, or personal information that can be used to identify you or others in your prompts.” In terms of the retention period:

Workspace Labs Data is stored in a manner that is not associated with your Google account and will be retained for 18 months. Copies of Workspace Labs Data that have been reviewed or annotated by human reviewers may be retained for up to 4 years.

You can opt out of Workspace Labs from here, though Google notes how “may not be able to rejoin the program.”