#39: Google Strikes Back with Gemini, Claude Charms, and Free AI Goodies Galore

Right, where was I?!

Ever so sorry folks, I’ve been away for 2 weeks, working hard on our AI learning hub launch. And a billion other bits and pieces. Founder life, eh.

But I’m back, and I’ve got a corker of a newsletter for you!

First things first - we’re launched and out to the public!

(Don’t care about the silly hub? Click here to skip to the good stuff)

Want to have a peek? Here’s a 5-minute tour.

Don’t forget our special offer - the first 200 members get £20/mo access for life.

We’ve sold 146 memberships so far…we’ll be sold out by the end of this week!

🤖 This week:

• Gemini Advanced: I put its Workspace integration through its paces

• Claude 3: The most human chatbot on the market by miles

• AI Posts of the Week: Awais Khan, Rory Flynn and Audrey Chia

• Freebie-Jeebies: AI in Sales: 45-minute expert webinar

♊ Gemini Advanced + Google Workspace

I’ve been saying for a while that there’s NO WAY Google are just going to sit around and watch their market share tank.

First came Bard, which…was crap. Next came Gemini. Far more interesting.

One of the best things about it: it integrates with your Google Workspace. Specifically with:

• Google Maps

• Google Flights

• Google Drive: Gmail and Docs

• (Google-owned) YouTube

You’ll need the Google One AI Premium Plan (£18.99/mo). This gets you extra storage (2TB), a few extra Google Photos editing features, but most importantly, access to Gemini Advanced.

Now first things first, you can only use Gemini Advanced with a personal email, it won’t accept work emails. So no matter how good it is, you can’t use it for work purposes, which drives me a bit crackers. WHY?!

Anyway, let’s explore Gemini Advanced’s ability to integrate with its own workspace.

🌎 Google Maps Extension

I’m always looking for good places to eat when I go to London for work. So I asked:

“Can you give me some ideas for places to eat within a 10 minute walk of Euston station? I'm looking for a good British breakfast.”

I love how it’s linked with the ratings of the places, gives me the opening hours and for two of the choices, I click and will get directions.

I wanted to test it a bit further, as I’m famously always getting lost.

“And how I would I walk from Euston to Monopoly Lifesized on Tottenham Court Road?”

First, it gave me driving directions.

I corrected it, and it rectified the situation quickly.

✈️ Google Flights 

I was a PA for well over a decade, and the idea of booking flights conversationally is an absolute dream.

“I'd like to fly from Birmingham to Amsterdam on 4th April, what are the flight times available, and can I have an indication of prices?”

I cross-checked with the EasyJet site and it’s all in order. Very useful indeed. What about a more complex query…

“I’m attending a conference in Barcelona which starts at 2pm (their time) on 24 April. My journey will be starting in Birmingham, UK. I’d like to arrive with 2 hours to spare. Please factor in time for security and queues at the airport, and plan my journey including prices of the flight.”

12 hours and 55 minutes?! What! I had a quick check on Google Flights myself and quickly found a 2 hour 10 min option with enough time:

Clearly, it struggles with more complex queries so be careful there.

🎥 YouTube

YouTube itself is a search engine, so I’m wondering what use case this could have. First, I tested its ability to search:

“Find me some videos on the topic of OpenAI’s Sora.”

It gave me both text and thumbnail results. Great but…couldn’t I have got that from YouTube directly?

So I asked it to summarise one of the videos for me. We all know chatbots are great at summarisation, and I’ve used YouTube summary tools before.

But it didn’t like that. I tried a few video options but, still nope.

✉️ Google Workspace 

Now, this is the one I was most interested in by far. I imagine they’re bound to release a work email version soon (probably at a premium), and I can see lots of use cases when they do.

Searching Google Drive

I created a doc, called it Carrots and typed in a list of vegetables (incidentally, AI typed them for me). 

I then asked Gemini: 

“Find me any files that contain a list of vegetables”

Oh.

When I asked specifically for carrots, it then actually found the doc. But it claimed the doc had no content. Glitchy.

Gmail

I’m constantly searching around my Gmail, and think their search facility is absolutely shocking.

So I asked:

“I'm going to Crufts this weekend, could you help me find any emails in my inbox about it?”*

It found an email from my husband sharing the details.

*I did go to Crufts by the way, it was like a dream.

So far, so useful. Let’s test it a bit more, sticking with the dog theme.

“Can you pull off a list of any emails in my Gmail that mention Dotty, my dog?”

I’m really impressed by this, not just the ability to pull off the right emails, but the intelligent summaries of each email.

And yes, if you read that far down, I really did commission a portrait of my dog as a crime-fighting time traveller, though it was a present for my Rick & Morty and dressing gown-loving best mate, Matt. Here it is, if you’re interested:

Overview

It’s actually pretty decent. I can see quite a lot of use cases for this, especially when I’m lost and hungry out in new cities. The ability to interact with my emails is also really useful.

The YouTube and Flights extensions aren’t as strong, but I’m sure they’ll be either improving or ditching these within a couple of months, as most AI tools tend to.

One thing though, Google - let us have this on our work emails, please!

🥸 Claude 3: the ChatGPT Killer?

The most human - and perhaps the most intelligent chatbot yet is out. And it’s incredible. I’ve been spending far more time on Claude 3 and Gemini than ChatGPT lately.

Here’s my video guide to Claude 3’s new features:

Claude 3

💰 Freebies

This week, I’m sharing a brilliant 45-minute LinkedIn Live I did with Isabella Bedoya, my personal AI hero and Jeremy Grandillon, sales and AI specialist.

Simply click this link to watch on demand - and let me know any questions.

🦾 This Week’s Top AI Content

And finally, here are some of my favourite AI posts from LinkedIn this week, just in case you missed them:

• Awais Khan’s Using ChatGPT in G Sheets and Excel

• Rory Flynn’s Consistent Objects in Midjourney

• Audrey Chia’s Google Meet AI backgrounds

Aaand that’s it for me. I’m always open to feature requests and feedback- just drop me an email by hitting ‘reply’.

Ta-ta from me - have a lovely week,

Heather