How Google’s Latest Announcement Will Affect Your Business
This month, Google hosted its annual Google I/O conference in Mountain View California.
The major theme of the conference: Google’s “bold and responsible” approach to Artificial Intelligence, especially in the workplace.
Google has stated loud and clear that as generative AI becomes integrated into our personal and professional lives, it’s imperative that this powerful tool is used responsibly, and that our data is protected as a result.
Google’s I/O update was full of announcements that will affect your business.
Don’t worry, we did the work for you and came up with our top 3 list of what to pay attention to for your business.
1. Duet AI for Google Workspace
If you’re like us, you live in Google Workspace. Google's latest announcement includes news of the upcoming integration of AI into Workspace tools like Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Gmail.
Designed to make your life easier, Google’s Duet AI is in direct response to the Open AI enhanced set of Microsoft Office tools announced earlier this year. AI integration into the tools we use every day saves time, makes our tasks more efficient and allows for cooperation between tools like Slides and Gmail.
What does this mean for your business?
Google has slowly been introducing AI into the programs we use every day. Features like, autocompletion of our sentences when composing an email have improved communication and made for more to-the-point emails. Something we all appreciate.
AI collaborative tools, like Duet, help people work more efficiently and a huge selling point for Google, keeps the user within the environment, rather than seeking sources outside of Workspace.
Keep an eye out as the AI integration becomes available to all Workspace users later this year.
2. Generative AI in Search
Google Search really is the holy grail of search engines. We’ve learned how to speak to Google to get the results we want from Search. As business owners, we are beholden to the Google Gods to appear in search results.
What does this mean for your business?
Google’s introduction of AI into Google Search means better search results and corroborated search results with sources. Something Google is coming out swinging against ChatGPT about.
Google has made it clear that the use of AI for generating information should be supported by sources; verifiable information, as google puts it; “Even in a world where AI can provide insights, people will always value the input from other people.” A major takeaway for business owners to be aware of when it comes to search; make content and make a lot of it- it’s the best way to stay relevant and appear in search results.
3. Privacy
One thing Google repeated throughout the event was “your data is your own” but what does this mean for your business?
Recently, Samsung banned the use of AI writing tools like ChatGPT and Bard internally after a leak of proprietary programming code, and other major corps, like Amazon are doing the same.
What does this mean for your business?
Unless you are using a ChatGPT API to access the tool, the information you input is public, meaning AI will use your data to learn more about a topic. Basically, be careful how you are using these tools, what information you are sharing, and the credibility of information you are potentially gathering.
Check out this week’s episode of Growing a Fruitful Brand, Raj and Ben are recapping the key takeaways from the Google I/O conference and share their insight on actions you can take for your business.
Ep. 32:
How Google’s Latest Announcement Will Affect Your Business
Automated Transcript
Ben Lueders:
You may not have noticed, but this week Google just told every business owner what they need to do to stay relevant online as AI takes over the web.
Hey, welcome to Growing A Fruitful brand, where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees. I'm Ben Lueders, founder and art director of Fruitful Design and Strategy, and this is my business partner and brand strategist, Raj Lulla. So Google held their annual IO event, which you do you know what IO stands for? What that's about?
Raj Lulla:
I mean, is it input output?
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, input output, exactly. You got it.
Raj Lulla:
Computer nerd.
Ben Lueders:
Every time I hear it, I think of like EIEIO, it's just stuck in my head, Google IO. I'm sorry. Which is a lot like Apple's big announcement events that they do and we always watch those because we're kind of Apple freaks, but in it, they detail changes coming to the Google programs that'll affect every business's existence.
Raj Lulla:
Yep. And so the nice thing is that there's clues inside these kinds of events of what's going to be coming.
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
That helps us figure out how to market ourselves, how to talk about ourselves online. We know that for every business to be successful, you have to have a website. And for that website to be found easily, you have to perform well on Google. So listening to Google's events help us know how can our website be found more easily? Therefore, how can we do business more easily?
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, it's probably more important for us to stay up on the Google events than the Apple events. A lot of times Apple events is like, what's the new fun toy that I can get? And Google has some of that too for those that are Android users and stuff like that if you're interested in their new tablets and stuff like that. But for us, and for all of you listening, it's really important to know where Google's going because we are so dependent on Google right now as businesses.
Raj Lulla:
Yep. We're not going to recap the whole event for you. The Verge and other great tech publications have done great recap videos of the event that are about 15 minutes long, and we'll drop a link in the show notes so you can see those. But we're going to focus on three areas that were really important in this announcement. Search, privacy, and workspace. And workspace are the Google Docs, those tools, those kinds of things. And there's big changes coming to each of these areas for Google that are going to affect every business. So let's just jump in. We put search first, even though it kind of came about halfway through the event, because this is the most important one for our customers, for business leaders, because it affects how people find your business. So can you just tell us a little bit about what do they talk about with search? How is search changing?
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. I mean it's changing in some really cool and good and, dare I say, natural kinds of ways. And so you're going to see AI integrated into our search in a really cool way with more conversational search prompts and getting better, more accurate results. And so one of the things that I really loved about it, what they showed is kind of like ChatGPT or some of these things, Bard. It's more of a conversation where you ask a question, you get really great results, but then you can ask follow up questions and there's like a history of that that you can kind of scroll and see. And, yeah, if you check it out, it's really cool, you can ask pretty complicated questions and you'll get a really nice conversational response.
Raj Lulla:
And I think we've talked about this before, how people have trained themselves to Google speak.
Ben Lueders:
Right, right.
Raj Lulla:
Where they give this example of just asking Google, "Where can I take a dog and some kids under the age of three to a national park for a vacation?" Normally we would do searches in bits, right?
Ben Lueders:
Yes.
Raj Lulla:
We'd do national parks that are good for kids, and then we'd pick a national park and go, "Okay, is blank national park, is Zion National Park, dog friendly?" And then if we didn't get the right result there, it's actually the dogs are not allowed on the trails there. Then we got to go back and look at the national parks again, pick a different one, "Is such and such dog friendly?" We've just trained ourselves to work for Google as opposed to Google working for us. And that's changing in this new iteration.
Cathy Edwards (clip):
You'd break it down into smaller ones, sift through the information, and then piece things together yourself.
Now, Search does the heavy lifting for you.
What you see here looks pretty different. So let me first give you a quick tour.
You'll notice the new, integrated search results page so you can get even more out of a single search.
There's an AI-powered snapshot that quickly gives you the lay of the land on a topic.
And so here you can see that while both parks are kid-friendly, only Bryce Canyon has more options for your furry friend. Then if you want to dig deeper, there are links included in the snapshot. You can also click to expand your view.
And you'll see how the information is corroborated so you can check out more details and really explore the richness of the topic
Ben Lueders:
Exactly. I really love that. In the olden times, that we're living in right now, and about to not live in, yeah, you'd try your best Google search, didn't quite get what I wanted. Let me start over again. Yeah, you're having to work extra hard and it looks like with a new one, it's going to be a lot more conversational and you're going to find yourself, I think, asking just more in-depth complicated questions.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, probably asking more questions.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, just asking more questions. Whereas I think I've sometimes dumbed my stuff down. I think Google could handle a lot more than what I, I would probably just search for Bryce Canyon or Arches and then have to start clicking through links to find out more, instead of just asking it the actual questions that are on your mind.
Raj Lulla:
You know what's funny? Is I didn't realize, even in preparing for this episode, I ran into this problem, because we're going to be talking about the AI writing piece of this in a little bit here, and I was Googling questions about plagiarism and do you have to credit Bard and ChatGPT and Jasper, the other famous kind of writers, AI content generators, do you have to credit them? And the thing that I kept getting was how much credits cost to use those platforms.
Ben Lueders:
Oh.
Raj Lulla:
Because it's like you have a certain number of credits left to write a certain number of emails or whatever. And so I was having to reformat my searches based on, okay, well, plagiarism. So it's like, "What word did I not use correctly to make Google work for me?" That's why I didn't even think about it. But I ran into this exact problem not 20 minutes ago.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, that's crazy. And hopefully you won't be running into that same.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Hopefully it's going away.
Ben Lueders:
It'll learn more and be more conversational.
Raj Lulla:
And something that I like about this is that we're probably moving more towards voice search. And so we're not even going to have to type these questions anymore. It will be more natural to just speak to our computers. And I know that stuff's all available right now.
Ben Lueders:
Sure.
Raj Lulla:
But we don't do it because if you have to do your search, and you remember the old days where we had to put quote marks around certain phrases and then sometimes you had to do must include, don't include, and there were all these symbols.
Ben Lueders:
Basically code.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, there was like-
Ben Lueders:
Command line.
Raj Lulla:
You could use plus signs to do something. I can't remember. But there were all these different ways of searching. Those codes still exist, but you don't have to use them as much because Google has just gotten so much better at serving you what you want the first time.
Ben Lueders:
Right, right, right.
Raj Lulla:
And we're going even further towards that, and I think that's where we're going to start talking to our devices more.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. And I know that might sound a little creepy or a little, what is it, 2001 Space Odyssey or talking to your computer or whatever. Is it Hal?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, but, I mean-
Ben Lueders:
But it's also kind of the best part about this too.
Raj Lulla:
It's also Star Trek where the computer's actually helpful and doesn't try to kill you.
Ben Lueders:
So we are a bunch of nerds here. We watch the Google events, we talk about Star Trek, yes.
Raj Lulla:
Which is interesting though, because Star Wars, nobody talks to the computer.
Ben Lueders:
C-3PO.
Raj Lulla:
Well-
Ben Lueders:
Go talk to the hyper drive.
Raj Lulla:
It's true.
Ben Lueders:
Sorry.
Raj Lulla:
But you don't see humans talking. But it's because it's a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Ben Lueders:
That's right. It was long time.
Raj Lulla:
It's not the future.
Ben Lueders:
That's right. Which is where we live now. We're way advanced. I love this segue. But moving on, I think this is, to me anyways, this is the best and most natural use case of AI that I'm really excited about. There may might be some unforeseen issues with it, but for the most part I think it's going to be really fun to use and interact. I think we're going to get better answers faster. And even in the thing they're saying, "This is great for those questions that have questions embedded in them, things that have lots of different viewpoints, and you need lots of sources to kind of sort out what you believe." And so I think it's going to be great for research and getting the right answers for the specific questions.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Speaking of sources, this is a big, big way that ChatGPT and Google are different. Google is leaning into transparency here. In fact, they even said in their presentation that you can see how the information is corroborated. And I know that they use that phrase on purpose because when you ask ChatGPT a question, it gives you an answer, but you don't have a way to gauge your level of confidence of whether or not that answer is correct. We talked about this in our last AI episode.
But with Google, they're putting links to the side of what they did at. In fact, they even have a mode where you can expand it and see the links under each answer of where they got those answers. And so I think it's a better way to approach this problem. I'm guessing ChatGPT will probably clone this soon.
Ben Lueders:
Yes.
Raj Lulla:
Or Bing will, and I think Bing is kind of already going that direction, but I liked the way that Google did this, and it gives credit to the people who actually created the content and it gives you more confidence because it's then not just the loudest voices online saying that whether an election was rigged or whether a disease is dangerous or if certain celebrities were-
Ben Lueders:
He's just picking random things popping into his head. This is not built on anything in reality, honestly.
Raj Lulla:
We're not not relying, we're not just going, "Well, this is what most of the internet says."
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
It's like, "Okay, who is saying this on the internet?" Because it really matters.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, exactly. And then you can make your own decision what you want to believe at that point. But I love that Google's leading the charge there.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
Don't leave us in the dark there. Let's make sure we cite our sources, just like we did in high school.
Raj Lulla:
And along those lines, they talked about, they had this great quote that it's built on Google's, "ranking and safety systems that we've been fine-tuning for decades." They're really positioning themselves against ChatGPT here. And with that is one of the biggest insights, if you don't hear anything else from this episode today, is that Google made it really clear that they're leaning into human created content. The gal who was presenting, she said that, "search will continue to be your jumping off point to what makes the web so special. It's diverse range of content from publishers to creators to businesses and even people like you and me." She made it really clear that things like blogs about taking your kids to a national park will still be really relevant. And even in the commercial that the Google showed for their product, you know how they do this in these announcements where they talk about it for 20 minutes and then they show a two minute commercial of how the product is changing? They showed both that human created content and they had a special emphasis on YouTube Shorts, which I think is really interesting.
So we will talk about this later in the episode, but if I were to take anything away from this episode, creating more content for your website and creating short video content is going to be huge for marketing your business and being found on Google, because it's going to start to be filtered into those synopses. You ask Google a question and it's going to give an answer. And that answer could come from you, from your business, if you are one creating the content. It could not be more important. Like I said, if you take nothing else away from this episode, it's that you need to be creating content or working with people like us to create content because this is where search is going.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned that, the emphasis on YouTube Shorts, and obviously we have a YouTube channel, we do YouTube Shorts.
Raj Lulla:
And we're really famous. My kids love when we get to four views.
Ben Lueders:
We are kind of a big deal.
Raj Lulla:
Thanks, all four of you.
Ben Lueders:
We are kind of a big deal. Hopefully that'll be changing.
Raj Lulla:
Two of them are me.
Ben Lueders:
But I was just talking to a social media friend of mine, it's actually my wife's cousin, and he said one of the first things that they do is they try to get businesses they work with on YouTube because YouTube is owned by Google.
Raj Lulla:
It's basically a search engine.
Ben Lueders:
So just think about that, think of how powerful Google is, and remember that YouTube is a part of that, and so don't neglect that. Even if you maybe don't have necessarily have a video podcast that you're launching every week. Having a couple key videos about your business that you have on YouTube that can pop up when people search for your business? May be not the worst strategy.
Raj Lulla:
Well, and such a great point about you don't have to have a video podcast or a studio or anything like that. Everything I have ever fixed in my house, I have looked for a YouTube video.
Ben Lueders:
Have you fixed things in your house?
Raj Lulla:
Some, yes.
Ben Lueders:
I'm going to Google this.
Raj Lulla:
But everything I've ever fixed in my house, I've looked for a YouTube video for it.
Ben Lueders:
Yes, that's true.
Raj Lulla:
To see somebody do it, and some of them I go, "Oh, no. I'm not going to do that." And if the person who made the video showing me how to do it was a local plumber or a local mechanic or electrician or whatever, then they'd be the first person I would call.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, yeah.
Raj Lulla:
It's like, "Hey, thank you for trying to help me walk through this. You're very helpful and kind and therefore I would rather do business with you because you've already provided value to me. You're the first person I will think of."
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
And a lot of these videos are shot on cell phones. They're not fancy. Even some of the most famous YouTubers, like Marquez Brownlee, whose channel we both love, he does an entire segment, he does a whole separate channel, reviewing cars, that he only shoots on phones.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, yeah.
Raj Lulla:
Even though he's got a literal million dollar studio in New York.
Ben Lueders:
Does he use a Pixel 7 or does he use an iPhone or both?
Raj Lulla:
So he does it on whichever phone he is reviewing that week.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, okay, okay. I don't know how I missed that.
Raj Lulla:
So it changes.
Ben Lueders:
Okay. I'll have to check that out.
Raj Lulla:
Now, one thing that I did feel, and I don't know if you picked up on this, but I kind of wonder what Gen Z and Gen Alpha are going to do with this because it sort of feels like we're watching a pretty major transition on the web.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, yeah.
Raj Lulla:
And TechCrunch came out with an article that said that 40% of Gen Z searches TikTok or Instagram before searching Google. And that actually came from a Google executive.
Ben Lueders:
Wow.
Raj Lulla:
That it was their estimate that Gen Z was doing this. So I sort of feel like we're watching the end of the web as we know it, and it's coming into this more conversational, more video based thing. I think there's always going to be room for written content. And again, Google is saying that that content should be written by humans, that we like AI for insights and for little tools, but that we want connection on the internet and that the healthy version of the internet is going to look like human created content. Just a lot of really interesting stuff happening and searching here. So some good things to keep in mind, but definitely create content, both video and written, for your website and for your business.
Ben Lueders:
All right, let's get into privacy. I think this is one of the things that a lot of people are sensitive about when it comes to artificial intelligence is, and with technology in general, privacy. Is my information being taken and used for nefarious means or for any means outside of my control. And so how did Google position themselves in Google IO in regards to privacy?
Raj Lulla:
They made it really clear that they're coming out swinging against ChatGPT. They kept saying the phrase, "your data is your own," over and over and over again, which I like.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
I like the position of it. It's really interesting because Apple has been doing the same thing against Google and Facebook.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
And I think Google has seen how much that has worked for Apple, but also this is somewhat closer to Google's brand. Don't get me wrong, they take a lot of our data.
Ben Lueders:
They read our emails, don't they?
Raj Lulla:
I mean, just your searches alone. I mean, they know way too much about all of us.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
But, as opposed to ChatGPT, which is pretty oblique about what they're doing with our data, Google is at least saying that your data is your own, so we have a standard to hold them against, which I do like. That said, I would still be pretty cautious about using it with sensitive information. We had a conversation here about, "Okay, well we're under a certain number of NDAs with our clients, and so do we want to introduce Bard in to our environment?" Which is Google's version of ChatGPT. It's a generative AI writer. And so there are still some issues here. Along those lines, I asked Google or Bard about a month ago if we have to attribute the content that we get from it. And Bard replied, get this, said, "If you share my content, you should attribute it to me. By including my name in the source of the content, by attributing my content, you are helping ensure that I am properly recognized for my work." How do you feel about that?
Ben Lueders:
It's just creepy.
Raj Lulla:
It's so creepy.
Ben Lueders:
Like, will you just say, "Bard." Like that's his name? I just feel like that's a weird-
Raj Lulla:
Is it a him?
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I shouldn't assume. Him or her. That's a really odd, yeah.
Raj Lulla:
It's so anthropomorphic it's weird.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. We were just talking about how humans search is becoming, that feels like-
Raj Lulla:
Too far.
Ben Lueders:
Too far. Yeah, yeah. That's the more I, Robot kind of creepy stuff that we don't like, I think.
Raj Lulla:
So interestingly, and you prompted me to do this and I appreciate that, was you're like, "Does it still say that?"
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. Because AI stuff is changing so fast.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
So what did it say today?
Raj Lulla:
So today it said, it had changed its answer, and it said, "Yes. It's always a good idea to credit Bard for the content it creates. This helps give credit to the developers who created Bard."
Ben Lueders:
Ah.
Raj Lulla:
"And it helps ensure that people are aware I am a machine and not a human being." I still feel weird that it's talking about itself as an I, but at least a lot better switch here.
Ben Lueders:
Well, it's a nice change that at least in the beginning of that, it refers to itself kind of the third person, like, "Credit Bard."
Raj Lulla:
Third person, which feels more natural, yeah.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, exactly. It's for the real people who made Bard. This is a much better answer. I think if you had gotten this, you would not even be mentioning this on the podcast. The first one is the one that's kind of like, okay. It gets into that creepy stuff that you see in ChatGPT. And I experienced it too when I was playing around with ChatGPT initially. It's just like you start going down this rabbit hole of questions and conversation and it's just like, "This is spooky. This is acting like a sentient human." And it's kind of messing with you a bit.
Raj Lulla:
You know what's weird, is that it's more creepy written than it is like when Siri's speaking to you or when Google's Assistant.
Ben Lueders:
Why is that? Is it because you imagine?
Raj Lulla:
I think it's a little bit about the interplay between when you hear a voice back, and I think especially too because the voice is slightly robotic, no matter how natural they try to make it, you get that that person is not really there.
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
But at the same time, I don't know if you ever do this, I find myself being, "Siri, you're so stupid."
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Raj Lulla:
It's like, "Oh my gosh, stop Siri," as if Siri is a person.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
But just seeing the computer right back to me, it's like, "I know you're not there." And there's this weird, I feel like I'm interacting with a machine, whereas with Siri, I feel like I'm interacting with a person. It's weird.
Ben Lueders:
That is weird. That is weird.
Raj Lulla:
Either way, be careful about private information.
Ben Lueders:
First world problems.
Raj Lulla:
With these things. Yes, Samsung banned ChatGPT and Bard this past week or so because some of its engineers had been feeding code to ChatGPT to have it check, which is a great use case for a tool like this, where it's like, "Hey, see if I made any mistakes." We are used to that with spell check and those kinds of things. But then that code leaked, and so we don't know how that happened. It's all part of the reason why I like that Google's talking about privacy here.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
But also not great, and we've not yet seen whether or not that same thing will happen with Bard. And there was a great article, again, we'll link in the show notes, that talked about how AI is just someone else's computer. I think there was a famous article about the cloud a long time ago saying, "The cloud doesn't really exist. You're just putting your stuff on Amazon's computers or Microsoft's computers." Kind of the same thing here. Just know that when you do stuff like this, you are giving information to other entities and you have to decide how much you trust those entities. JPMorgan and Amazon also have similar bands or restrictions in place for their employees. So I would be very, very careful with whatever you're doing with these services.
Ben Lueders:
All right, Raj, let's get into Google Workspace. So, as we said at the beginning of this show, we're big Apple fans for hardware, but we are Google nerds when it comes to the software. We are a Google business. We use Google Docs. We're using Google Docs right now. Google Slides we're using more and more for even stuff for our clients. Google Sheets, of course. And so there were a lot of new and interesting things changing in Workspace.
Aparna Pappu (clip):
Workspace was built to allow you to collaborate in real timewith other people. Now, you can collaborate in real time with AI.
AI can act as a coach, a thought partner, a source of inspiration, as well as
a productivity booster across all of the apps of Workspace.
Our first steps with AI as a collaborator were via the Help Me Write feature in Gmail and Docs,
which launched to trusted testers in March. We've been truly blown away by the clever and creative ways
these features are being used, from writing essays, sales pitches, project plans, client outreach, and so much more.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. So I was a little surprised that I didn't hate these changes as much as I thought I would.
Ben Lueders:
You were kind of braced for, "I'm going to hate it."
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, because Google Drive and these tools seem more private because you organize your files and it's actually a little difficult to share the files where you share it and then the other person's like, "I need to edit access." Which is good. We want these things to be kind of locked down.
Ben Lueders:
Yes.
Raj Lulla:
And so having AI kind of injected into that could have felt like a violation, but interestingly, for the most part it didn't. There's some really cool applications that they're doing here. And I think part of it is that they have very softly introduced us to some AI.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, yeah.
Raj Lulla:
So in email and Docs for a while now, they've been using kind of a version of auto complete, which we've had on search for a long time. So this is another way they've gotten us used to this because search, you start typing a few letters and then it's like, "How did it know I was going to search for that? Are there that many people who search for that or are they reading my mind?"
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
And then they introduced it to Gmail and you start typing, "Can we meet at 3:00 PM?" And it starts filling out the rest of your question, "on Zoom or virtually at my office."
Ben Lueders:
Oh, yeah.
Raj Lulla:
And it's not always right, but it's helpful.
Ben Lueders:
Because you probably haven't been thinking, "That's artificial intelligence," or whatever.
Raj Lulla:
Right.
Ben Lueders:
You're just like, "Oh, that's a nice feature. It's handy." And some of us don't even think about it anymore.
Raj Lulla:
Yep, yep.
Ben Lueders:
And that's the point is they have kind of weaned us onto this kind of different way of thinking. Even as far back as, this probably started with Microsoft Word or something, but even just spell check or the Grammarly type of things where it's like, "Maybe use this word instead of that word." We've gotten more used to suggestions in our docs and emails and stuff like that for sure.
Raj Lulla:
So with Gmail, they have kind of a smart compose feature now, which is great as opposed to smart complete. They gave this great example of asking an airline for a refund for a flight that didn't happen or something. So they did the smart compose, it included the details of the flight, it asked for a full refund, and then they even had different versions of the email that could be written, like a short one, a long one. And it was interesting. Now, the one thing that I did think, I don't know if you thought this?
Ben Lueders:
What's that?
Raj Lulla:
Was I kind of wonder if this is going to be essentially AI sending emails to AI and then the AI responds, "I'm sorry, sir. We can't give you the full refund." And then it's like, "I demand satisfaction."
Ben Lueders:
If the robots taking over means the robots taking over all the crappy stuff that we don't want to do?
Raj Lulla:
Oh, yeah.
Ben Lueders:
I am fine with that.
Raj Lulla:
Right. I'm just worried about if the company programs the AI to just never give in.
Ben Lueders:
Right, right.
Raj Lulla:
Then it's our computers are just going to ping back and forth forever.
Ben Lueders:
And we'll never get our refund on our airlines.
Raj Lulla:
And it'll probably just flood your email box and you'll have to burn your computer and throw it in the river. This could be where Skynet springs up here. But hopefully, though, that doesn't happen, and in the meantime, hopefully your email that AI wrote for you is going to a human customer service representative who is going to refund you and that'll be great, until that stops happening and then we're going to have a new problem.
Ben Lueders:
What if it's going to be more like, it's funny, what if email becomes less of a thing? Sorry, now this is a little bit of a rant. Maybe we'll have to cut this out. But if it does become, especially for these kind of monotonous, everyday kind of tasks. This is not a creative email. It's like there's a certain way that you need to write an email to get a refund. What if it becomes less composing an email to go to another email, and it's more like just tell your AI assistant, your virtual assistant, "Hey, can you send an email or can you get a refund for that thing?" And then they handle it. And it is the robots talking to each other, but it's not even like there's this email exchange so much.
Raj Lulla:
So there are a lot of companies that are built on making things difficult.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, sure.
Raj Lulla:
No offense to any insurance. Actually, you know what? A lot of insurance companies, they don't have enough representatives available, there's arduous processes and all that, because the company does well when they don't pay out. And there's been leakers and whistleblowers who've talked about this, that this stuff happens. So I think that there's an amount of it, especially with good companies that will be like, "Cool, we can automate some of these processes." I think you're right there.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
In fact, I think what you may even see is, like you said, sort of skipping email entirely. And it might be that you're going to start seeing buttons in apps saying, "Request a refund," or something.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
And I wouldn't be surprised, even if it's request a refund and then it opens your camera and says, "Tell us what happened." And they may not even be a human listening to it, but it could be AI transcribing it and go, "Okay, they said these three keywords. Let's just automatically issue a refund." Or AI could even get to the point where it measures how angry you sound in the video.
Ben Lueders:
What if I just have a resting angry voice? And I'm actually really-
Raj Lulla:
You're going to get a lot of refunds.
Ben Lueders:
I don't that problem.
Raj Lulla:
I was going to say, "You don't."
Ben Lueders:
My problem is they think I'm happy.
Raj Lulla:
These eyebrows are going to get a lot of refunds though.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, man.
Raj Lulla:
So yeah, that's email. It's going really well. Docs was kind of an interesting one. I didn't like the Docs stuff quite as much as I liked the others. I will say, there was a study, I think it was out of MIT, that showed that ChatGPT, and therefore Bard, I would assume, would have similar results, helps writers produce more and better content. But the one thing that it said is that it helps poor writers more than it helps good writers.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, sure.
Raj Lulla:
Which makes sense, of course.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
But this could be one of the reasons, if I can be as bold as to say that I'm a decent writer.
Ben Lueders:
He is. He is. It's not just him.
Raj Lulla:
But this might be one of the reasons I'm less excited about this feature.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
They gave this example of writing a story and then the sidebar kind of prompting you, "What could happen next." And it felt like a little third grade teacher to me.
Ben Lueders:
Well, and full disclosure, both Raj and I actually write fiction.
Raj Lulla:
Right.
Ben Lueders:
And so it it a little bit of a sensitive issue to us. And the fact that that was the example they gave, is a mom writing a fictional story and on the sidebar, it's literally guessing what could be the twist ending or whatever.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
It just ruins it for me. Now, the example was like, "Oh, I want a spooky story to share at a camp out with my kids," I think is what it was. So this is not for commercial use, but you can see how someone who maybe not as talented of a writer might suddenly think that they are a talented writer. I don't know. It just, it gets a little murky and weird
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, and there's a little dystopian future about it, right?
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
Where it's Mom's in the kitchen with her VR glasses on having a Zoom meeting with whoever.
Ben Lueders:
This is where Mark Zuckerberg lives all the time.
Raj Lulla:
It's like, "Honey, go have your hologram teacher write a story with you." And parts of it's just sad. I'm just not that interested in that feature.
Ben Lueders:
That sounds like a utopian society that I long for.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Let's let the robots raise our children.
Ben Lueders:
Let's go talk about Slides for a second.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
So Google Slides, we use it, like I said. One of the things that they are including in Google Slides is being able to generate images within slides, and it was in Docs as well. And so if any of you have seen any of the Midjourney or other AI generated images, that's all going to be built into these tools now. And so the example that they gave was a really kind of fun personal one. I think it was for a parent's 50th wedding anniversary or something like that. And Dad likes fondue. Mom likes pizza. And so they had it generate an image of the two of them. And it's kind of funny and it's kind of cute. You can put it in the Slide deck at the party. No harm done, right?
Raj Lulla:
Even then the pizza looked really weird.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, you'll have to flash an image of that. But it was kind of dipping in the fondue. It was kind of gross.
Raj Lulla:
Well, and they went to a more photorealistic one.
Ben Lueders:
It made it worse.
Raj Lulla:
And the shape of the pizza was weird and where the crust was and where the toppings were, it just creeped me out because there's this thing called the uncanny valley where if stuff is too close to reality but not quite there or whatever, it starts to creep you out. And I had that feeling because it looks like a real pizza, but no one in their right mind would ever cut a pizza like that.
Ben Lueders:
And I will say, I haven't played around with it. And we're just judging this based on the couple images-
Raj Lulla:
On the demo.
Ben Lueders:
-they showed in the demo. But I think since our AI episodes we did a couple months ago that a lot of the AI imagery has really drastically improved in some of these services. Some of the stuff that we said then I think is already irrelevant because they're getting hands right. They're getting a lot of things right. And I felt like the images they showed in this Google presentation didn't really hit the mark for me.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, they're not as advanced.
Ben Lueders:
I thought they would be better in Midjourney. But I'm just judging that based on the examples they gave.
Raj Lulla:
Again, this could be Google doing it on purpose, though.
Ben Lueders:
That's true.
Raj Lulla:
Like more slowly rolling it out. It's still a little cartoony. It's still a little fake to not weird us out.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, that's interesting.
Raj Lulla:
Or it could be that they're not caught up.
Ben Lueders:
That sounds like a conspiracy theory.
Raj Lulla:
No. It could be that they're not caught up to Midjourney, but I mean they're one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
And I imagine they've got the resources to do it. Whether or not they have the imagination to do it, it's a different story. But I do think that Google has been really cautious about rolling AI out to us because if people freak and bolt from the platform, then they have a lot to lose.
Ben Lueders:
Well, and I think they mentioned, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they mentioned working with Adobe Firefly.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
Is that right?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
And one of the big things with Adobe, as I understand it, is that they're working really hard to make sure that their AI art is not ripping off the illustration artwork of actual designers. So in my community, a lot of people hating on AI art because it's basically stealing and pirating, even in some cases, like taking the signatures of artists and stuff like that. There's a lot of, oh man, it's just making my community really upset. But I know that Adobe, who creates all the creative software for designers, is trying to go the opposite direction. So I'm not exactly sure how they're sourcing what they're doing. But you would imagine that it might not be quite as good though if you're not sourcing it the same way. So that could be a part of it.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. So for our audience that are business owners, business leaders, who aren't artists, they're going to have this tool if they use Google Slides in their sidebar. Should they use images generated by Google or other services to throw on the Slide deck, spice it up a little, even if the pizza looks a little funky? And should they pull those onto their website? What's your professional opinion there?
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, yeah. So this is getting into the age-old branding trope of consistency. It's all about, "We want our images, the weight of our line weight and our icons, we want everything to be on brand and be consistent." That's like half of what we do here at Fruitful. And so just because you can generate some pizza-fondue image or whatever for a presentation, especially for businesses, I don't think that this is necessarily something that we should be doing. Because these image images are randomly and spontaneously generated. There's no way you can hone in the specific consistency and style of the image to match your brand standards. So yeah, just because you can, I don't think that this necessarily means you should. In the same way that they've had it built into slides and other things that you can pull in images from the web, just random Google images and put them into your presentations, and that doesn't mean that those images work compatibly and consistently with your brand.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, and when you think about it in real scenarios where if you have a deck that's designed for your company, that has all of your brand standards, your colors, your fonts, all those things in there, and you're pitching investors and you polish that thing up crazy and even sometimes even making your graphs the right colors and all those things.
Ben Lueders:
Yes, yes.
Raj Lulla:
So that it looks like it's part of a group of people who really thought it all the way through.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
So you have that experience. But then on the other side, you have the experience of the consultant who comes in who obviously just used a PowerPoint or slides template and it's got the blue wavy background or whatever, and then they pull some image of somebody climbing Mount Everest onto the Slide deck and it's pixelated and it's still got the water mark from Getty or whoever on there.
Ben Lueders:
Yes.
Raj Lulla:
And that kind of stuff just makes you roll your eyes at that person. You go, "Wow, they tried real, I wonder how much we paid for this?"
Ben Lueders:
Or what about those stock images of those white cutout guys that are 3D? Do you know what I'm talking about, with the puzzle pieces?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, yeah.
Ben Lueders:
They're always kind of trying to illustrate business concepts or something. I don't even know. We'll have to flash some of those on the screen.
Raj Lulla:
Oh, yeah.
Ben Lueders:
I don't even know what those are.
Raj Lulla:
If you're using those, call Ben right now and get a better Slide deck. You deserve better. Your customers deserve better than that.
Ben Lueders:
That's right.
Raj Lulla:
But yeah, so consistency equals trust when it comes to branding. The more your brand looks and feels like your brand, the better you're going to perform.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
I mean, think about how the experts do it. Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Nike, Coca-Cola, all of their stuff looks like their stuff. And even when it's different, it still looks like them. Like IO had kind of a visual theme this year.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
And it was very cool, but it still looked like Google.
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
It looked a little bit like Apple, which was funny. There was a couple of slides that were like, "Ah, they're stealing from each other a little bit." But even in that, it's like they're still in the vein of high-tech and one of the largest companies in the world and clean user interfaces. They have a lot in common. That's part of the reason they look a little bit like each other. But these companies do consistency really, really, really well. And that's why you're not creeped out by an Amazon van driving around your neighborhood delivering packages to your house because it's got the smile on it. But if it's just a beat up old van and somebody gets out, you're like, "Hang on. What's happening here?" That consistency leads to trust. That's a huge part of branding.
Ben Lueders:
What if the van drives up and it has an AI generated smile on the side, it has a couple of teeth missing and a couple of extra-
Raj Lulla:
It's got fingers for some reason.
Ben Lueders:
-little arrows coming in the corner? Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, yeah, you would be hiding your kids from that van, I guarantee you. The one thing I will say, the last thing I'll say on this point was, this doesn't mean that there isn't any place for AI generated graphics or visuals in your brand.
Raj Lulla:
Totally.
Ben Lueders:
And in fact, I just shared with the designers this week an article I saw, I can't remember it off the top of my head, which brand it was, but they created this beautiful kind of gradient pattern that's like a big part of this brand through AI generated art and it has the specific brand colors. And so these tools are really interesting and I think we're going to continue. We're going to keep exploring and trying things out. But in general though, just generating random images in your Slide decks, the chances are that's probably not going to be the best consistent solution for your brand going forward.
Raj Lulla:
It's a very much just because you can doesn't mean you should situation.
Ben Lueders:
That's right. Didn't your parents ever tell you that?
Raj Lulla:
One other tool that we didn't mention was that Google Sheets.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, yeah.
Raj Lulla:
Has some AI coming and I'm actually really excited about that.
Ben Lueders:
This might be the best.
Raj Lulla:
Because for those of us who are not spreadsheet experts, it's very nice to have the computer talk to the computer about the numbers so that we can get the right answer.
Ben Lueders:
Yes.
Raj Lulla:
As opposed to, I hate it when it gives you that error and it's like, "Reference. You screwed it up." And I was like, "I wasn't trying to."
Ben Lueders:
And of us, he is the Sheetiest of us here, okay? Man, I look at Google Sheets and I'm just like, I wish it was Slides or something else. But, yeah, they'd show an example of, "Hey, I want to create a sheet about this kind of a thing."
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
And it generated that kind of a thing.
Raj Lulla:
And it looked better than most Sheets normally do.
Ben Lueders:
It looked really good.
Raj Lulla:
It was already even formatted pretty well.
Ben Lueders:
It had different colors and stuff that were pretty. I mean, who knows if it's going to work that well. But that looked pretty exciting to me. And it reminds me of the thing, and you touched on it a second ago, Raj, but what these kind of tools are doing for code is amazing, that normal people that don't know anything about code, we're going to be able to generate our own apps and websites and stuff from just prompts.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
And that's the kind of thing that you're seeing here in Sheets, is like, "I don't know how to run Sheets and I don't know all the codes and put a plus sign here and this," I don't know anything, "but I want to make this kind of a thing." And then it doing the work for you.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, yeah.
Ben Lueders:
That's the future.
Raj Lulla:
Our friend Jay Owen, who's a StoryBrand agency owner, he created a multiplication practice website.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Raj Lulla:
I think for his daughter.
Ben Lueders:
With ChatGPT, right?
Raj Lulla:
With ChatGPT.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
And then it's funny because a whole bunch of other agency owners were racing each other to get to the top score on the multiplication board, and they're talking trash in Slack and it was great. But, yeah, I mean a lot of us aren't coders, and it's nice to be able to spin up a proof of concept really quickly and you still need design help, still need UI, UX, help, all that kind of stuff. So you're not cutting out human developers, but it's going to make that work faster.
Ben Lueders:
Yes.
Raj Lulla:
Because you might take that code then and go, "Hey, I didn't even know that I wanted to build this, but this took off."
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
And with just a really garbage interface that I created through just simple code, "He, developer, can you take this and make it what I need it to be?"
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
And then that can be the jumping off point for a conversation with a designer, a developer. So that part is really, really cool.
Ben Lueders:
Super cool.
Raj Lulla:
Kind of wrapping up this tools section or the Workspace section, just thinking about, okay, what's good, what's bad here? Again, there's some really helpful stuff. Automating drudgery type tasks like asking for refunds, creating some formulas and sheets, that kind of stuff, that's good. Kind of the yellow light stuff would be using AI generated images in Slide decks. That's one I would do with care. If it's an internal presentation and it's funny, that might be good.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
Otherwise, probably best for personal use. And then with Docs, still kind of the jury's out, I think still, on the value of having AI writing stuff for you. I think probably maybe one of the best ways to think about this is, I don't think any of us are excited to watch a Marvel movie that was written by AI, and then go to our Google account and write an AI generated review that we're going to share with our friends in an AI generated social post. And they're going to respond to that AI generated social post with an AI generated comment, LOL. I don't think that we're super excited about that future.
And so what I did like was that Google positioned AI as a tool and it put people at the forefront. And as we kind of wrap up things that, that's going to be the main message here. We started there with search, we're ending here with tools, is that this is an opportunity for people to share their experiences and to share their expertise.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
And have that feed the conversational AI, especially in search. That's a huge, huge opportunity that I would take advantage of right now because if you wait for everybody else to do it or you wait till it's popular to do, then the market's going to be flooded and it's going to be harder to be clear. But you've got a real opportunity now.
Ben Lueders:
We like to end every episode with a little call to action. And so based on everything we've been talking about, you need to create more content that sounds like a conversation. What questions are your customers asking about your industry? Answer your customers in blog posts, on your website, and in video, maybe on YouTube, that's owned by Google, in YouTube shorts. This is all stuff that we're trying ourselves to help make our company more visible and more helpful to people on the web and in search. And I think if you do this, if you create more content that sounds like a conversation for your customers, you're going to help grow something good in this world.
Raj Lulla:
Thanks for joining us today on Growing A Fruitful Brand. If you found today's show helpful, don't forget to subscribe and consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it.
If you'd like to Work with Fruitful on a branding website or messaging project of your own, you can always reach out on our website, fruitful.design.
So until next time, don't forget to grow something good.
