Google Launches ‘Help me write’ Function in Chrome Browser
Google is commencing the deployment of an experimental feature, ‘Help me write,’ in its Chrome browser. This functionality, built on generative artificial intelligence, will assist users in writing text based on the content of a web page they are viewing. Currently, this feature is available to English-speaking American users of Chrome for macOS and Windows.
Feature’s Functionality
This innovation will aid in composing short texts like product reviews or completing polls. The system can ‘understand the context of the web page you are on’, incorporating that information in the suggested text, such as the essential features of a product under review.
The Evolution and Activation of the Feature
Google first introduced the ‘Help me write’ function in the last year’s Google I/O event, initially aiming to assist in writing emails in Gmail. However, now users can activate it by clicking a pop-up button near the webpage’s text field, specifying the desired length and tone of the text. This feature is still experimental and currently only accessible to English-speaking Chrome users in the U.S. Users must enable it separately in browser settings and restart the program.
Google’s Disclaimer on Data Usage and Security
Google’s support page dedicated to the ‘Help me write’ feature includes a disclaimer, advising users not to grant the feature access to personal data such as names, phone numbers, home addresses, social security numbers, or credit card details. The tool is also not recommended for use on page hosting personal or confidential info. However, even if users share such data, Google assures they will not be used for training the model.
Practical Use of the Feature
Whether this new feature will prove helpful in practice remains to be seen. Editing the AI-generated text may take as much time as writing from scratch, but undoubtedly, it could make creating fake reviews for products on marketplaces easier.
