At Google I/O 2024, Google has announced a new AI feature within its Google Workspace ecosystem called AI Teammate. The idea is simple: create an AI agent and make up a job for it within your organization. This AI Teammate, powered by Gemini, will be able to act within your virtual office just like any other teammate would, and can be given a name and asked questions.
As shown in the demo, you can grant it full access to a range of Google apps, Spaces, meetings, chats, and documents within your workplace — and give it a job. In the demo, this AI Teammate was given a description, as well as a variety of jobs and instructions, including monitoring and tracking specific projects, analyzing data, and facilitating team collaboration.
Google talked about it as a “collective memory of work together,” allowing you easily recall things, ask it questions, or summarize the current state of a project. In one example, the AI Teammate even responded to a chat, mentioning some conflicting decisions based on previous meetings.
It feels like the early days here, and Google said it even plans to open up AI Teammates to third-party companies that can build these agents for specific purposes within a company or organization. It’s not hard to imagine companies doing much more with this in the future, creating more capable AI agents that can do work on their behalf.
The idea of an AI Teammate sounds innocuous enough, but in a world where there are increasing anxieties about AI replacing jobs, having it there as a virtual teammate only emphasizes this reality.
AI Teammates is part of the larger expansion of Gemini into Google Workspace, including some new features in Gmail mobile.
Google did not state when AI Teammates would be rolling out, only saying “stay tuned.”
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.