Duet AI: What Google Workspace Admins Need to Know to Add This Service

Admins in many organizations that use Google Workspace can now activate and add Duet AI to company accounts by following these steps.

Google announced in late August 2023 that Duet AI for Google Workspace had been made generally available as an add-on service. The key features of this AI service are detailed below, along with the steps a Google Workspace administrator will need to take to make Duet AI available to people in their organization.

Pricing and general deployment guidance are also covered, as the price of a Duet AI license may exceed the cost of many Workspace licenses. As always, make sure any usage of AI complies with your organization’s policies.

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What features does Duet AI include?

Duet AI for Google Workspace offers a variety of features in each of the following applications, including:

• Google Docs
  • Help me write (generate text)
  • Editing help: Tone, Summarize, Bulletize, Elaborate, Shorten, Rephrase.
  • Proofread: Conciseness, Active voice, Wording, Sentence split
• Gmail
  • Help me write (generate email text)
  • Editing help: Formalize, Elaborate, Shorten, I’m feeling lucky (add creative details)
• Google Slides
  • Help me visualize (listed as a Labs feature)
• Google Sheets
  • Help me organize (generate sheet content)
• Google Meet
  • Generate a background (generate images)
  • Translated captions in various additional languages
  • Studio look

Google plans to provide more features and functions to Duet AI customers in the future. Keep in mind that the generative AI features are still in development and will not necessarily deliver factual content.

How much does Duet AI cost?

As of September 2023, Duet AI is available as a paid add-on service for the following editions of Google Workspace:

• Business Standard or Plus.
• Enterprise Essentials, Standard or Plus.
• Education Fundamentals, Standard or Plus.
• Frontline Starter or Standard.

A free trial is available if you wish to experiment with Duet AI for 14 days.

Duet AI costs $36 per account when paid monthly, which gives you the greatest month-to-month flexibility and annualizes to an expenditure of $432 per account per year. If you pay once a year, you will pay $360 per account per year, which gives you a bit of savings when calculated monthly (e.g., the equivalent of $30 per month).

Note: To use Duet AI, you must be at least 18 years old.

How to add Duet AI in Google Workspace

If you’re a Google Workspace administrator, you will need to complete two sets of steps to activate Duet AI for people in your organization. You first select the service and payment plan, and then add the service to one or more accounts.

Select your Duet AI plan

Before you can assign Duet AI licenses to accounts, you first need to add Duet AI as a subscription option.

1. Sign in to the Admin console.
2. Select Billing | Get More Services (Figure A).

Figure A

3. From the Google Workspace add-ons category, choose Duet AI for Google Workspace Enterprise (Figure B). The Start Free Trial option offers access to the free trial and paid options.

Figure B

4. Review the general information provided about Duet AI, and then select Get Started (Figure C).

Figure C

5. Select one of the three options: Trial plan, Flexible plan or Annual plan (Figure D).

Figure D

6. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and select Checkout (Figure E).

Figure E

7. Review your selected plan, and then select Place Order (Figure F).

Figure F

8. You may review available licenses in the Admin console’s Billing | Subscriptions section (Figure G).

Figure G

Assign Duet AI licenses

Next, you may add the Duet AI license to your Google Workspace accounts. As usual with Google Workspace licenses, you may add licenses to all accounts, to all accounts within an organizational unit or to individually selected accounts. The following shows how to add the Duet AI to an individual account.

1. Select one or more accounts to which you want to add a Duet AI license (e.g., check the box to the left of the account, as shown) and then select the Assign Licenses button from the menu (Figure H).

Figure H

2. From the menu that displays, choose Duet AI for Google Workspace Enterprise and then Assign (Figure I); this adds the service to the account. You will be billed based on the license you selected earlier, as indicated.

Figure I

The Duet AI service will be added to the account. Once it is active, a brief Duet AI informational box will display when a person goes to each of the activated Duet AI applications on the web (e.g., Gmail, Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets and Google Meet). People may then use Duet AI features.

Duet AI’s business benefits and deployment guidance

If cost is not a concern, go ahead and deploy Duet AI to everyone in your organization immediately. This lets people take advantage of all Duet AI features.

Most IT leaders will likely want to deploy some Duet AI licenses so that people in the organization can experiment and learn what Duet AI adds to standard Google Workspace functionality. For this purpose, you would budget for a number of monthly Duet AI licenses, assign the licenses to people for short-term testing, and then re-assign the licenses to different people after a month or months of testing.

As of September 2023, the strongest business case can be made for Duet AI writing and translation features. Anyone who writes with Google Docs or Gmail will likely find the editing and generative text features helpful. And people who otherwise might rely on different translation methods may value the expanded language translation capabilities in Google Meet. Organizations might prioritize the deployment of Duet AI for people and teams who need translation services and for people who write on a regular basis (e.g., PR, marketing and grant writers).

Mention or message me on Mastodon (@awolber) to let me know if your organization has activated Duet AI. If so, is Duet AI available to everyone? What features of Duet AI do you find most useful?