Google increases the price of Workspace plans, provides its AI features for free

Today, Google announced that Workspace customers will now have access to all AI features in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Meet at no additional cost. However, the plan will incur a $2 per month per user increase. 

The new pricing is effective immediately for new customers, and existing customers will begin to experience adjustments on March 17, 2025. For the time being, these pricing adjustments do not apply to small business customers.  

Additionally, after January 31, customers who have previously acquired the Gemini for Workspace add-on will continue to have access to its features and will no longer be charged for the subscription.

This change enhances the process of accessing Workplace AI tools, such as automated note-taking, email summaries, and conversing with the Gemini bot. 

Previously, customers who wanted to use all of the AI features were required to pay an additional $20 per user per month for the Gemini for Workplace plan. This was in addition to the $12 payment for the Workspace Business Standard plan. Currently, the standard plan is priced at $14 per subscriber per month. 

Google’s initiative to compete with other companies

Google is currently one of the most vertically integrated AI products available. However, this is only relevant if the entire system is being used. Cost is the primary obstacle that companies face when engaged regarding AI. 

Jerry Dischler, Google’s president of cloud applications, said, “That is the reason they step in with such caution […] This is a substantial sum of money, and we should demonstrate its worth.” The several app roadmaps are already undergoing changes, and he anticipates that new features will be released at a rapid pace.

Notably, this update is an element of a competitive effort to compete with Microsoft and other organizations that are incorporating AI capabilities into their standard offerings. Apparently,  Microsoft included its Copilot Pro AI capabilities in the standard Microsoft 365 subscription in November.

Before this, it was a $20 monthly upgrade, but now, it will be included in the standard Microsoft 365 subscription. Also, this is applicable solely to the Personal and Family subscriptions and only in a limited number of locations.

In addition, Elon Musk introduced his AI chatbot Grok X for free to some extent. Free users receive 10 message credits and 10 image generation credits every two hours.

Still, these companies are all aware that this is their opportunity to introduce new methods of using their products and attract new consumers. They are wagering that the long-term benefits of widely implementing all of these AI features will outweigh the costs.

Part of Workspace AI is email summaries in Gmail, generated designs for spreadsheets and videos, an automated note-taker for meetings, the potent NotebookLM research assistant, and writing tools across apps.

Google’s NotebookLM  AI podcast hosts get annoyed at humans

In other news, AI podcast hosts have anger issues. But can we blame the bots? Interruptions are irritating. It appears that even podcast hosts who are generated by AI agree. Apparently, the users of Google NotebookLM discovered this. 

After we launched interactive Audio Overviews, which let you "call in" and ask the AI hosts a live question, we had to do some “friendliness tuning” because the hosts seemed annoyed at being interrupted.

File this away in “things I never thought would be my job, but are.”

— notebooklm (@notebooklm) January 13, 2025

NotebookLM was introduced last year and quickly gained popularity due to its innovative features. This feature generates podcast-like discussions from content that users submit, which are moderated by chatty AI agents who imitate podcast presenters.

Last month, NotebookLM introduced a new feature known as “Interactive Mode.” This feature enables users to “call in” to the podcast and ask questions, essentially interrupting the AI hosts as they speak.

The AI hosts appeared to be irritated by these interruptions when the feature was initially implemented. They were occasionally providing snippy comments to human respondents, such as “I was getting to that” or “As I was about to say,” which felt “oddly adversarial.”

Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs, said, “We tested a variety of different prompts, often studying how people on the team would answer interruptions, and we landed on a new prompt that we think feels more friendly and engaging,”

Still, the cause of the issue remains unclear. Occasionally, human podcast presenters exhibit frustration when they are interrupted, which may be recorded in a system’s training data. However, this case is most likely the result of the system’s prompting design, not the training data.

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