What you need to know
- Starting this week, Google Workspace users who subscribe to Duet AI can use Enhanced Smart Fill in Google Sheets.
- Enhanced Smart Fill uses artificial intelligence to detect relationships between cell columns in a spreadsheet, and suggest new entries with generative AI.
- The feature will only be available to Duet AI subscribers, which costs $30 per user, per month.
Google this week released a new feature called Enhanced Smart Fill for Google Sheets, and it’s exclusive to Duet AI subscribers in Google Workspace. The tool builds upon the existing Smart Fill feature, which was released in 2020. Most users won’t be able to take advantage of it since Duet AI subscriptions are intended for business use, as evidenced by the hefty $30 per month/per-user fee.
Google’s latest offering uses artificial intelligence (AI) to determine whether there are relationships between the data entries in multiple cells. This is more advanced than the original Smart Fill feature, which could only detect patterns between cell entries.
After identifying a relationship between data in columns, Enhanced Smart Fill can suggest new data entries based on “sentiment classification, combining and generating text, extracting specific text, formatting addresses, structuring phone numbers and emails, condensing text, and more.”
Google included a few examples of how Enhanced Smart Fill can help save business time during data entry. One instance showed the feature generating the next steps for a business’ sales cycle based on the customer details in a preceding column. Another saw it generate custom thank you notes for donors based on the details of their contribution in a separate column.
This doesn’t work completely automatically, though. Since Enhanced Smart Fill detects relationships, it will need at least a few completed columns and cells before suggesting what to fill in the remaining cells. Essentially, it’s using the same type of generative AI we’ve seen in chatbots like Google Bard and ChatGPT. The difference is you can now access it straight from a Google Sheet.
Enhanced Smart Fill is on by default for Duet AI users in Google Workspace. However, suggestions will need to be manually accepted by the user before taking effect in the spreadsheet.
Google’s latest addition to Duet AI joins a suite of existing generative AI features for paying Google Workspace customers. AI-based tools are also found in Gmail, Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Meet as well.
