Google expands Gemini AI features across Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive

Google announced on Tuesday that it is introducing a broad set of new Gemini-powered AI features across Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive. These new capabilities allow users to quickly create fully formatted first drafts, spreadsheets, and slides by drawing on information from Gmail, Chat, and Drive.

The company says the tools are meant to make these apps more personal and better at helping users complete tasks faster, directly within the products themselves, rather than forcing them to switch to a separate chatbot or tool.

A new feature in Docs called "Help me create" lets users describe what they want to make, after which Gemini follows those instructions and pulls relevant information from Drive, Gmail, and Chat to produce a first draft. For example, a user could ask Gemini to "draft a newsletter for our neighbourhood association using the meeting minutes from my January HOA meeting and the list of upcoming events."

Once that first draft exists, Gemini can assist in refining individual sections without needing to regenerate the full document. Users can also turn to the "Help me write" feature for tasks such as improving clarity or adding more detail where it is needed.

In addition, when several people are contributing to the same draft with different voices and tones, a new feature called "Match writing style" can now help make the document feel more unified. Gemini will suggest edits to make the tone and voice more consistent throughout the draft.

Docs is also receiving a new "Match the format" tool that lets users mirror the structure and style of another document. For example, if someone finds a travel itinerary template they like, Gemini can populate it with the user's own trip details by pulling relevant information from emails, such as flight confirmations, hotel reservations, and car rental bookings.

In Sheets, Google says Gemini is evolving from a tool people work inside into more of a collaborative partner. With a single prompt, it can gather relevant data from Gmail, Chat, and Drive and quickly generate a fully formatted spreadsheet.

For example, a user might ask it to "organise my upcoming move to Chicago. Create a checklist for packing by room, a contact list for utilities, and a spreadsheet to track moving company quotes from my inbox."

For more advanced tasks, users can now use a "Fill with Gemini" feature to populate tables more quickly. This tool can instantly generate custom text, categorise and summarise data, or pull in real-time information from Google Search.

For example, someone managing college applications might already have a tracker for all their application details. Instead of manually searching for each school's deadlines, tuition, and other information, they could set up column headers for the details they want and then let Gemini fill in the table automatically by gathering the relevant information from the web.

In Slides, users can now have Gemini generate a fully editable slide within a presentation that matches the deck's overall theme, drawing on context from files, emails, and the web. If a user is unhappy with the result, they can ask Gemini to revise it with instructions such as "match the colours to the rest of my deck" or "make this more minimal."

Looking ahead, Google says Slides will eventually allow users to create an entire presentation from a single prompt, using relevant context where needed. For instance, a user can ask Gemini to "create a 5-slide deck for my upcoming Tokyo trip."

Google also announced changes to Drive, saying it is no longer meant to function only as a place to store files, but increasingly as an active collaborator. Now, when users search in Drive using natural language, Gemini will show an "AI Overview" at the top of the results, similar to the summaries that appear in Google Search. That overview will summarise the most relevant information from the files while citing the sources, so users do not need to open a document to locate what they need.

A new feature called "Ask Gemini in D" allows users to ask more complex questions across documents, emails, calendars, and the web. For example, someone could select all their tax-related files, ask, "What should I ask my tax advisor before filing this year's taxes?" and receive a detailed response based on their specific information.

All of these new features are rolling out in beta today and will initially be available to Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers. They are available worldwide in English for Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and in the United States for Drive.