In late December, while we were all manually typing up our out-of-office responders, Google quietly dropped a new AI feature to help manage the future of work. Aptly named CC, Google is positioning its experimental AI assistant as a virtual Chief of Staff that lives within your Gmail inbox.
While currently in beta testing at Google Labs with subscribers, CC claims to help us spend less time digging through our email threads and more time making decisions. Here’s the breakdown of what CC is, and why it caught our attention.
Using email for task management
For most of us, the workday begins and ends with email. And, we’re good at it. Australia ranks 10th in the world when it comes to how many emails we send to each other. 8.1 billion are sent every day. (It also helps explain why email marketing is so effective).
CC, powered by Google’s Gemini model, leverages this by operating as an automated layer over your existing Google ecosystem (if you use it). Instead of you hunting for information, CC sends you a “Your Day Ahead” briefing every morning. This email aggregates your upcoming appointments, flags pending tasks, and highlights important documents in your Google Drive. It’s designed to give you the executive summary of your life before you’ve even finished your first almond latte.
Image: Google LabsEasing the mental load for SMEs
In Australia, more than 97% of all businesses are small. Often, the founder is the HR manager, the accountant, and the salesperson all at once. CC aims to alleviate this mental load through three core functions:
- Natural language tasking: You can bcc or reply to CC from your email to add items to your to-do list or save a spark of inspiration for later.
- Cross-app intelligence: It connects the dots between a PDF saved in your Drive, a meeting on your Calendar, and a thread in your Gmail.
- Low friction: There’s no new app to download or interface to learn. If you can write an email, you can use CC.
How to prepare your business
While the technology is impressive, it’s not yet available to Australian users. CC is currently only available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the US and Canada who are aged 18 and above. Additionally, Google said the assistant currently only works with consumer Google accounts and is not available for Workspace users.
Even though CC hasn’t landed in the Australian Workspace market yet, this is the time to audit your workflow. The arrival of CC signals a shift from generative AI (writing poems and emails) to agentic AI (taking actions and managing schedules). You can prepare for this technological shift by:
- Cleaning up your drive: AI assistants are only as good as the data they can access. Start organising your Google Drive folders and naming conventions so that when Agentic AI arrives, it can find your contracts and briefs instantly.
- Consolidate your ecosystem: CC works best when your calendar, mail, and documents are all under the Google umbrella. If your business is fragmented across multiple platforms, you may miss out on these integrated benefits.
- Watch the subscription space: Keep an eye on the Google One AI Premium tiers. This is where Google is road-testing these features before they hit the enterprise-grade Workspace accounts.
