Google’s infusion of its Gemini AI across its services continues with Google Calendar. As a person who often depends on that calendar to make sure I come where I need to be on time, I was fascinated by the possibilities of Gemini in this context.
It will be beaten as a way for Gemini to control your schedule, find event information and even create events for you through natural language recordings. Here, however, is the deal.
Gemini in the calendar should make life easier by letting you just ask what you need. No more scrolling through endless event entrances or manual adding things like “lunch with sarah” (which, if I don’t write right away, will be lost to the void forever). Instead, you can say, “When is my next meeting with my manager?” “Add a dental agreement until 2 pm on Friday.” or “When is Cabbage (my dog) Birthday?”
It’s not available to everyone yet. Right now, Gemini in Calendar is part of Google Workspace Labs. To try it, first sign up for Google Workspace Labs. This means going to the registration page, checking the right boxes and then awaiting approval which should not take long.
When inside, Gemini appears in the Google Calendar Web version as a “Ask Gemini” button in the upper right corner. Click it opens a panel where you can see suggested requests or enter your own request.
There is a satisfying simplicity of asking, “What’s on my schedule tomorrow?” And instantly gets an answer instead of manually clicking through the calendar grille as if you are decoding old rolls.
Calendar calculations
I played around with Gemini when I saw if it could pull people’s birthdays and upcoming meetings, and whether it could make plans for me by asking it to do things like “Add a dinner reservation to Thursday at.
If you are hoping for full AI-driven event planning, which automatically invites people to an event, find the best time based on everyone’s accessibility or ensure an important reservation at the trendy sushi place, you are still on your own. Gemini can add events to your calendar, but you will need to manually invite guests. It also only works on the web, which means mobile users will have to wait for their AI planning dreams to come true.
And as with all things, there is the question of trust. AI has a way of being almost right, which is sometimes worse than being completely wrong. For example, when AutoCorrect changes “Meeting on Three” to “me to eat at three”, it is technically accurate, but wildly unhelpful. So even though Gemini is great for quick tasks, I haven’t quite handed over my calendar to it yet. I still like to know that if something is important, I put it there instead of trusting an algorithm to keep my life in order.
For those who try it and decide it’s not for them, it means turning off Gemini for calendar leaving Google Workspace Labs completely. There is no halfway opt-out. But honestly, unless you already have an extremely well -organized system, it is worth testing in my opinion. Even if it only saves you from missing an important meeting, it can be a lifeguard.
It is also worth pointing out that Gemini’s real magic is not that it does something wildly new, it just does with the help of Google calendar easier. And if you need to remember your son’s next music class, that ease of use can be a real blessing.
