Google Chat Becomes Central Hub for AI Agents in Workspace with Ask Gemini and Workspace Intelligence Updates

Google is positioning its Chat application as the central hub for employees to interact with artificial intelligence agents across its Workspace suite, marking a strategic shift in how users engage with AI tools in daily workflows.

The Ask Gemini in Chat feature, now generally available, allows Workspace users to converse with AI agents not only within Google’s ecosystem but also with third-party platforms such as Asana, Jira, and Salesforce. This functionality enables users to retrieve project details, summarize missed discussions, generate documents and slides, schedule meetings, and access files directly through natural language prompts in Chat.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian emphasized the vision during a briefing, stating that Chat is being made the centerpiece through which people communicate—not just with colleagues, but with all their AI agents, whether built within Workspace or on Google’s broader platform.

Irwin Lazar, principal analyst at Metrigy, noted that the integration reflects Google’s effort to compete more directly with Microsoft Teams, observing that chat has become the primary interface for employee engagement as email usage declines. He suggested that ideally, AI access should be uniform across all Workspace apps, including Gmail and Docs, to ensure consistent availability.

Additional AI enhancements unveiled at Google Cloud Next ‘26 include the ability to build and edit spreadsheets in Sheets using natural language prompts, with Gemini capable of orchestrating multi-step workflows that combine data from files, emails, chats, and the web. In Docs, Gemini is gaining the ability to generate infographics grounded in business data, improving visual communication within documents.

Underpinning these capabilities is Workspace Intelligence, a new work graph that connects and interprets data across emails, chats, files, and web activity to improve the accuracy and relevance of Gemini’s outputs. Google states that this system understands complex semantic relationships and personalizes responses by learning from individual work patterns and communication history.

The company clarified that Workspace Intelligence data is not accessed by Google staff, used for advertising, or employed to train AI models unless explicitly permitted by the customer. Lazar compared the concept to Microsoft’s Work IQ, describing it as an AI agent with visibility into both personal activities and organizational knowledge to enhance work efficiency.

However, Lazar cautioned that for such tools to be truly effective, they must integrate seamlessly with external systems like CRM, ERP, and project management platforms. He noted that while third-party integrations are progressing, the extent of multi-vendor support in environments using combinations of Google, Microsoft, Zoom, Cisco, and Slack tools remains uncertain.