WE’VE been hearing the word “hybrid” a lot in the past few months in reference to our work setups. Hybrid, in this context, essentially means being more flexible and employers allowing employees to work onsite, at home or any other place where they are more comfortable.
So many adjustments have been made to make sure employees are well physically, mentally and emotionally. For instance, a friend of mine who works for a BPO recently went back onsite but a few weeks into that, there was a mini Covid-19 outbreak at their office. The company then decided to adapt a hybrid set-up, which allows the employees to work from home four times in a week.
Working online hasn’t been without its challenges, including poor Internet connection and, if you’re working from home, dealing with sounds of babies crying, a TV set with the volume turned up, and even dogs barking.
I was once in a call with an officer from my consultancy job and a client, and when I played the recording later I could clearly hear my mother sneezing loudly and repeatedly (think 15 consecutive times) in the background. So, here’s some good news: Google recently announced updates to Google Workspace to help working individuals to be more productive and fight information overload.
Here are seven upcoming features—most made possible by AI—on Google Workspace in the coming months:
Portrait restore uses Google AI technology to improve video quality. This means that even if you’re using Google Meet in a poorly lit room, your video will be automatically enhanced.
Portrait light uses machine learning to simulate studio-quality lighting in your video feed. It also allows you to adjust the lighting position and brightness. This feature also eliminates the need for a ring light.
Dereverberation filters out echoes in spaces with hard surfaces, so it sounds like you’re in a conference room with microphones, even if you’re not.
Live sharing will sync content that’s being shared in a Google Meet call and allow participants to control the media. All participants will see and hear what’s going on at the same time.
There will now be auto-summaries in Spaces so users will get updates on conversations you missed.
There will be automated transcriptions of Google Meet meetings to Google Workspace, so users can catch up on meetings they couldn’t attend. This is a big relief for someone like me as transcription is not something I look forward to.
Google said it takes security seriously, so the security protections used for Gmail are coming to Google Slides, Docs and Sheets.
“Our latest AI innovations are designed to help employees bring focus to what matters, collaborate securely, and strengthen human connections across the ways and places work happens,” said Johanna Voolich Wright, vice president of product management for Google Workspace, in the company’s recent blog post.
Again, Google emphasized that they are big on security. “We keep more people safe online than anyone else in the world, and Gmail blocks more than 99.9 percent of spam and phishing messages from ever reaching users’ inboxes,” said Johanna Voolich Wright. Thus, Google Workspace comes with enterprise-grade access management, data protection, encryption, and endpoint protections built in.
Google said it will scale the phishing and malware protections that guard Gmail to Google Slides, Docs, and Sheets to bolster security even more.
“Our systems constantly learn from each attempted attack against the billions of users who rely on our products. These insights enable us to anticipate and thwart new attacks by identifying emerging patterns and entry points,” said Wright.