Google today announced a major update to its team messaging platform Google Chat, integrating powerful new AI features and a redesigned interface. The enhancements are aimed at making Chat a more capable and intuitive hub for collaboration and communication.
The most significant new addition is the integration of Google's AI agent Duet directly into Chat. With Duet in Chat, users can get automated suggestions, updates, and insights as they collaborate across Google Workspace apps like Gmail and Drive. Duet can provide summaries of documents, recap missed conversations, and even answer complex queries by searching through messages and files.
Beyond AI, Google also revamped Chat's user experience, bringing it more in line with Google's latest Material 3 design language. The updates include a streamlined conversation list that combines direct messages and group spaces, helpful shortcuts like chronological sorting, and an upcoming intelligent prioritization system that will automatically surface relevant conversations based on each user's communication patterns.
Google stated the updates make Chat better suited for large organizations, announcing support for spaces with up to 500,000 members and a new Huddles feature for quick audio/video conversations. Chat will also gain deeper integrations with Google Drive, Google Groups, and third-party apps like Asana, Salesforce, and Zendesk.
On the security side, Google emphasized Chat inherits the protections and controls of Google Workspace, including spam/phishing filtering and data loss prevention capabilities. New content moderation tools for admins are also forthcoming.
The launch of an enhanced Chat experience is necessary if Google hopes to make its messaging platform more competitive with rival products like Slack and Microsoft Teams. Now with the focus on AI and integration with Workspace, Google aims to differentiate Chat as an intelligent, collaborative hub for the modern enterprise.