For many of us, it can be challenging to keep up with the volume of documents that arrive in our inboxes every day: reports, reviews, briefs, policies and the list goes on. When a new document is received, readers often wish it included a brief summary of the main points in order to effectively prioritize it. However, composing a document summary can be cognitively challenging and time-consuming, especially when a document writer is starting from scratch.
To help with this, we recently announced that Google Docs now automatically generates suggestions to aid document writers in creating content summaries, when they are available. Today we describe how this was enabled using a machine learning (ML) model that comprehends document text and, when confident, generates a 1-2 sentence natural language description of the document content. However, the document writer maintains full control — accepting the suggestion as-is, making necessary edits to better capture the document summary or ignoring the suggestion altogether. Readers can also use this section, along with the outline, to understand and navigate the document at a high level. While all users can add summaries, auto-generated suggestions are currently only available to Google Workspace business customers. Building on grammar suggestions, Smart Compose, and autocorrect, we see this as another valuable step toward improving written communication in the workplace.
To continue reading this article, click here.
