Google's Duet AI is now generally available, bringing the generative AI assistant to its range of Workplace productivity apps, the company announced on Tuesday. The Duet AI features will cost$30 per user each month, putting the tool's price in line with rival Microsoft's upcoming Copilot.

Duet AI uses genAI to assist users accessing various Workspace products. For example, it can write draft texts in Google Docs based on user prompts, generate email responses in Gmail, and organize data in the Sheets spreadsheet app. It can also take notes and summarize conversations in the Meet videoconferencing tool.

Google initially unveiled plans to add AI features to its Workspace products in March based on its large language models, promising to increase productivity by automating rote tasks. Since the Google I/O event in May, Duet AI has been accessible in public preview to users in geographies with access to a Google Workspace Labs waitlist.

Google's Duet AI features are now available as an add-on for customers on the Google Workspace Enterprise pricing tier for an additional$30 per user each month. That's a significant cost - although Google doesn't publish enterprise tier pricing publicly, it's believed to be between$27 and$36 per user per month; adding access to the AI features roughly doubles the cost per user each month.

Google plans to make the product available to customers in other tiers "in the coming months," a spokesperson toldComputerworld. A free trial is also available, though Google didn't immediately respond to a request for details on the terms of the trial.

Duet AI is available to English-speaking users "everywhere that Google Workspace is sold," a Google spokesperson said; support for other languages is coming available later.

Duet AI can help create a summary from relevant source documents and then automatically build a presentation in Slides.

The launch of Duet AI means Google has beaten Microsoft to market with genAI tools for its office software suite. Microsoft is currently trialing its own Copilot AI assistant for Microsoft 365 applications such as Word, Excel and Teams. The Microsoft 365 Copilot, based on OpenAI's ChatGPT, will also cost$30 per user each month when it's made available later this year or in early 2024.

"Google's choice to price Duet at$30 is surprising, given that it's the same price as Microsoft Copilot," said J. P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst on Forrester's Future of Work team. "Both offerings promise to improve employee productivity, but Google Workspace is positioned as a lower-cost alternative to Microsoft 365 in the first place. Its products contain perhaps 70% to 80% of the features of their counterparts in the Microsoft 365 office programs suite."

However, as with Microsoft's genAI feature, Gownder expects Duet will provide customers with improvements around productivity and employee experience, even if it's too early to make firm judgements on either product.

"Duet, like Microsoft 365 Copilot, will help usher in a new era of productivity and collaboration software experiences," said Gownder, enabling employees to converse with the software using complex natural language commands. "That functionality reduces the friction between humans and software and will accrue productivity benefits over the medium to long run."

The Duet pricing reflects Google's confidence in the impact its generative AI features will have for knowledge worker productivity, said Ra