Coming soon: Gmail, Hangout users to get AI-powered grammar suggestions

Last year, Sunder Pichai-led Google announced a grammar checker for Docs and other G Suite apps powered by Artificial Intelligence, however, it was only made available to select business users and the only way to activate was through a company administrator and was also disabled by default.

This year, the search engine giant has revealed that the AI-powered feature is launching to all customers who use G Suite Basic, Business, or Enterprise which, at present, cost $5, $10, or $25 every month respectively.

G Suite comprises Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar, and Google+ for communication.

From Wednesday onwards, users will be able to see contextual grammar suggestions in their documents which is similar to how Google’s spell check already works, however, it will be underlined with a blue line.

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The new AI technology is capable of catching errors that range from commonly mistaken usage of “affect” and “effect”, to more complex usage of correct preposition and even tense of verbs.

To do this, Google developed a model by using machine translation and then probed the AI-created rules with linguists to ensure that it was accurate in its grammar suggestions.

Considering that the model is powered by AI, it also means that the tool would also have the ability to learn and improve with time.

While the tool, at present, is exclusively available to G Suite customers, it is likely to expand its reach later on, however, it is yet to be seen how the tool plays out.