Google renamed its Workspace assistant twice in a year

An unnamed set of features, announced first

Google's 14 March 2023 post, titled “A new era for AI and Google Workspace,” announced generative drafting and rewriting in Docs and Gmail, image and video generation in Slides, formula generation in Sheets, and background generation in Meet, without giving the feature set a product name. Access began with a trusted-tester programme in English in the United States, with a wider rollout promised through the rest of 2023. At this stage there was nothing yet for a buyer to purchase or budget for; it was a roadmap, not a shipped product.

A named, priced product five months later

By the 29 August 2023 announcement, the same direction of work had a name, Duet AI for Google Workspace, and a defined feature set: presentation generation in Slides drawing on a person's Drive and Gmail content, studio-quality video effects and automatic notes in Meet, a refreshed Chat interface, and longer smart replies in Gmail. The announcement offered a no-cost trial rather than stating an ongoing price. Readers comparing the two posts side by side can see that “coming this year” in March had, by August, become specific shipped capabilities with a specific brand attached.

A second rename, six months after that

Google's own Workspace Updates blog records that on 21 February 2024, the Duet AI for Google Workspace Enterprise add-on was renamed Gemini Enterprise, alongside a new Gemini Business tier with a smaller feature set and monthly usage limits aimed at organisations starting out with the technology. The August 2023 announcement page itself now carries an editorial note confirming the earlier product is “now Gemini for Google Workspace.” Three names in roughly eleven months is not evidence the underlying engineering changed three times; it does mean a purchase order, a training deck or an admin console screenshot from any one of those months may already reference a name Google has stopped using.

Questions to ask before you adopt it

• Does your licence or contract name a product (“Duet AI”) that the vendor has since renamed or restructured?
• When a feature list changes with a rebrand, has anything been added, removed, or moved to a higher tier?
• Who in your organisation is tracking vendor renames so admin documentation does not go stale?

None of this makes the underlying claims false; it means a name is a poor anchor for what a tool does. The safer habit is to check the current feature and tier list against what was promised at purchase, on whatever date that purchase happened to fall.