Google Workspace Studio: AI Agents Inside Your Workflow

n this episode of the Macro AI Podcast, Gary and Scott break down Google’s bold entry into the AI-agent space with Google Workspace Studio—a new platform designed to build intelligent agents and automated workflows directly inside Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, and the broader Workspace ecosystem. 

The hosts explore how Google evolved from lightweight collaboration apps to a full AI automation platform, what lessons they learned from Duet AI, and how Workspace Studio changes the game for businesses that rely on Google Workspace. Gary and Scott dive into real use cases for HR, finance, sales, marketing, and knowledge management, and they compare Workspace Studio to Microsoft Copilot Studio to help leaders understand which platform delivers the most value. 

They also cover the risks, governance challenges, ethical considerations, and where AI agents are headed next—including the rise of digital coworkers with persistent memory. 

If your teams live inside Google Workspace, or if you’re evaluating the future of AI-driven productivity, this episode is essential listening. 

About your AI Guides

Gary Sloper

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gsloper/

Scott Bryan

https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjbryan/

Macro AI Website:

https://www.macroaipodcast.com/

Macro AI LinkedIn Page:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/macro-ai-podcast/

Gary's Free AI Readiness Assessment:

https://macronetservices.com/events/the-comprehensive-guide-to-ai-readiness

Scott's Content & Blog

https://www.macronomics.ai/blog

Transcript

00:00
Welcome to the Macro AI Podcast,  where your expert guides Gary Sloper and Scott Bryan navigate the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence.  Step into the future with us  as we uncover how AI is revolutionizing the global business landscape,  from nimble startups to Fortune 500 giants.  Whether you're a seasoned executive,  an ambitious entrepreneur,

00:27
or simply eager to harness AI's potential,  we've got you covered.  Expect actionable insights,  conversations with industry trailblazers  and service providers,  and proven strategies to keep you ahead in a world being shaped rapidly by innovation.  Gary and Scott are here to decode the complexities of AI  and to bring forward ideas that can transform cutting-edge technology  into real-world business success.

00:57
So join us,  let's explore, learn  and lead together.  everyone. Welcome back to the Macro AI podcast. I'm Gary. And today we're talking about a big launch in the AI world, Google's new workspace studio. It's Google's move into the AI agent space and it could change how teams work inside of Gmail, docs, Sheets, Drive, all the tools that you're familiar with. Basically their entire workspace system. Yeah.

01:25
Yeah, and I'm Scott and ah I agree with you. I think this one's pretty big. ah Google has always been pretty much brilliant at lightweight collaboration. So, know, Docs, Sheets, real time editing. ah But they're missing that deeper automation layer.  And I think Workspace Studio feels like the moment they finally said, OK, ah we're going after real enterprise workflows now.

01:50
Yeah, exactly. And the timing is fascinating because everyone's racing to build co-pilots and AI agents. We see it all the time. But Google's approach here is really different. ah This isn't just sprinkling some AI features onto existing applications, for example. This is Google giving companies a platform to build actual digital coworkers. So think of AI agents that live inside workspace and operate on their own information that your business is already using today.

02:20
Right. Yeah. And if you're one of the millions of companies that run on Google workspace and that number is somewhere around five million businesses, this could really unlock a whole new level of productivity. And I think it's important to understand what this thing does and what's possible right now. Yeah. And within that number, I think about all the secondary educational locations. Yeah, a lot of education and others that have just

02:49
dominated that platform. so today we're going to break down how Workspace Studio came to be, what lessons Google learned from earlier attempts like Duet AI, how Workspace Studio works under the hood, how it compares to Microsoft's Co-Pilot Studio, which many of you use, and where this whole AI coworker movement is headed, not only just in 2025, but beyond.

03:13
Yeah. And also we'll talk a little bit about what leaders should be doing right now to prepare. Cause this isn't just a, you know, an email feature update. This is Google actually walking into the enterprise automation space with a, with a real platform and probably hoping to move upstream into some of that market space that, uh, the larger enterprise that Microsoft has locked down.

03:42
All right. So let's, let's dig in and kind of talk about the evolution story here with Google.  Um, really, you know, how they, how they landed here. And because this didn't just come out of, you know, thin air, Google workspace has always had loyal fans, fast interface, clean design, real time collaboration. Those are the things that come to mind. when companies needed serious workflow automation or deep integration across business systems,

04:10
Google wasn't their first call. wasn't their first decision in that process. No, exactly. were not.  And companies would say, you know, we love docs and Gmail, but when it comes to enterprise automation, need Microsoft or a standalone  workflow platform. And that kind of created the split. People loved using workspace, but they couldn't run their operational backbone on it. Yeah.  And that's,  you know, what came out of this was, you know, Duet AI and honestly,

04:40
It never felt tightly connected to the actual work, at least in my experience, it felt like Google was trying to bolt artificial intelligence onto the suite rather than weave AI through the workflow. Um, and so, you know, that's where I just think it was a little disconnected. Yeah, exactly. think a duet AI was helpful in spots, but it, but it wasn't built to be an automation brain.  Um, it didn't orchestrate processes. didn't feel like a real AI partner. And meanwhile,

05:09
Microsoft rolled out Copilot and Copilot Studio uh and then OpenAI launched GPT. uh Salesforce started to lean in with Einstein and suddenly  everyone was building automation layers  and  Google needed something deeper and they were probably planning to do this.  And not to mention all the other AI automation tools that have exploded under the business scene. So that really put the pressure on Google.

05:37
Really the good news for Google is that they've had the technology Gemini 1.5 and 2.0 finally gave them the reasoning capabilities to build enterprise grade automation platform. Workspace Studio is the first time Google translated that research advantage that they've built over this time period into a product that really feels truly built for businesses across the globe. Yeah, I think so. Let's  really talk about what Workspace do.

06:07
video is, I think the  simplest way to describe it, it would be, um, it's a control room for building AI agents and automated workflows that operate directly inside the tools  that you already use every day. Yeah. I think that's a really good description of control room. I mean, it's not a separate app. Your agents live in workspace itself. They can watch your Gmail inbox, interact with docs, update sheets.  Uh, they can even organize, uh,

06:36
Google drive, uh schedule meetings on your calendar, prepare content, summarize project, initiate workflows, a lot of components there that you can have some assistance with. And that's all from inside your workspace environment. Right.  And you can deploy these agents to specific people or specific teams, right? You know, or roll them out across the whole organization uh with permissions and policies.  So, you know, it'll behave just like

07:05
a real employee access. Yeah. I mean, it's really the first time Google workspace becomes not just a collaboration tool that you might think of that's its only workstream,  but the actual automation hub for your enterprise.  So I think this is where it's really, you know, at the tip of the spear now. Yeah. So normally we do a little bit of a kind of a technical deep dive. So why don't we walk through the main components, starting with the agent builder.

07:35
Um, this is where you define what an AI agent's job is. So you give it specific instructions,  um, outline its responsibilities, the files it can access, the actions it's allowed to take.  It really feels like you're writing a job description for a digital employee, but it's your AI agent. Yeah. And because it's inside workspace, the agent really works with your actual business data that's internal to your organization. It can summarize a doc.

08:04
pull metrics out of sheets, send an email to a customer. It can even create a meeting with the right context all within your existing company environment today. And I think that's a big difference from, you know, traditional third party tools is that workspace is taking it much further based on what it's learning. Yeah. And it also has a nice workflow canvas. So this is where you

08:31
create sequences like, you know, when an invoice PDF arrives in a shared inbox, extract the data, validate it, update the sheet, uh store it in store the file and drive, route it over to accounting. And those  kinds of multi-step flows used to require, you know, several different apps.  you're absolutely right. And, and the other thing that comes to mind is, the natural language builder. It's really fantastic for speed and efficiency. You can

09:00
describe a workflow in plain English. ah An example could be create a workflow that prepares a meeting brief by pulling uh all related docs from Drive and summarize them. And then what will happen is Workspace Studio will draft a version that you can refine and tweak for that meeting. Yeah. Yep. And then importantly, Google also added connectors to outside systems and I'm sure there'll be a rapidly growing list, but know, big

09:29
query, Cloud SQL, CRMs, support systems, obviously custom APIs. So Workplace Studio isn't just about workspace content, it can orchestrate work across your tech stack. Yeah, that's a good point. The other thing to keep in mind is, from an administrator standpoint, you're really controlling everything that matters to the organization. think of auditing, logging, permission controls, Google's...

09:57
finally built something that's enterprise ready to  match that from an admin standpoint, which is definitely going to be a game changer for Workspace as this rolls out. Yeah. Yeah. They're ready to compete in the enterprise space with AI workflow automation. uh Let's start. Let's talk a little bit about what businesses can actually do with it today. So if you think of HR, imagine a new hire joins the team.  Workspace Studio can generate their onboarding documents.

10:26
I can provision folders, schedule meetings, update sheets, and send out reminders. Things that normally take a few hours can be done pretty much instantly. Yeah, I I can, I'm probably dating myself, but I can remember some of my onboarding at prior companies and usually a person or two that had to manage all that and spend hours just, you Yeah, and you're waiting in between jobs. Yeah. That's what waiting. Yeah. Cause you're just, you're jumping at the bit to

10:56
be onboarded and start training. that's definitely a game changer. uh Other areas like finance, for example, uh those teams get invoice processing automation. So sales teams get lead qualification agents that watch inboxes and  prep, you know,  BDRs and SDRs. Marketing teams get content drafting workflows that organize assets from Google Drive and generate summaries very quickly. So.

11:26
Now you're starting to see these traditional silo teams being able to take advantage of workspace. Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned content and we've talked about knowledge management and knowledge management platforms uh on the show.  And we think that they're critically important component to an AI strategy. And companies have millions of documents and sheets,  most of it tribal knowledge. And now you can have agents that  can

11:53
instantly retrieve the exact information employee needs. kind of imagine a, you know, a department brain that's available on demand. Especially finding that needle in the haystack and some of the legacy documentation that you have buried away that is important for, know, whether it's a case file or something like that. And the other thing too is, you know, email automation is going to be a game changer for many companies that are using this. So think of inbox triage.

12:23
customer escalation detection when something goes awry. Auto responses, uh sentiment monitoring. Really Workspace Studio can take a massive load off of Teams with email automation to really get down to some of the more finite problems that a human can uncover. Yeah, and I think the way it feels is that for the first time, Google Workspace is not just a productivity suite as it's been marketed in the past, but now it's more of an operational engine.

12:53
Yeah. Yeah. Good point. You know, the other question that will come out of this is, okay, so I'm a Microsoft shop or  we're thinking about moving to Google. You know, what, what is the difference between Google versus Microsoft? So we compare this to  Microsoft co-pilot studio because that's the obvious question. You know, who are you seeing kind of take the edge right now, Scott? Yeah. Yeah. I think this would be a  common question out in the marketplace.  I think.

13:23
Most people would agree that Microsoft definitely has the enterprise maturity.  Um, they, they own dominance across large corporations. They've got a deep stack. You've got teams, outlook, dynamics, power automate tools. Uh, it's definitely powerful,  but, sometimes it feels heavy and you really need some IT muscle to actually, you know, really deploy it well. Maybe, maybe a third party. Yeah. And, and then if you were to pivot to Google, I think their strength is simplicity.

13:51
So Docs, Sheets, Gmail, kind of what we talking about before. Those apps are easy, intuitive, and Gemini's multimodal capabilities are now woven throughout the suite. a lot of times I see G Suite deployed into smaller organizations, uh crafty startups.  So that simplicity would definitely translate very well into their culture as they add this uh into the portfolio.

14:20
Yeah, I think in reality, if your company already lives in Microsoft's ecosystem, Co-pilot Studio makes sense. There's a you can do with it. And obviously Microsoft has invested heavily into it. um But if you run your business on Google Workspace, and that's still a lot of companies like we talked about, Workspace Studio is something your teams need to master right away. And if you can't, then it's probably worth, probably going to generate an ROI if you bring in a third party again. Yeah.

14:48
I think we're watching the beginning of a platform war that's bigger than office versus Google docs. You know, this is, this is the battle for who becomes the operating system for AI coworkers in the new world. If you really think about this and, and you know, there's a lot of legacy there, as you mentioned, um, you know, especially on the Microsoft side for many organizations, but

15:12
it's really going to come down to speed, efficiency, cost and competitiveness in this AI world. So it'll be interesting to watch. Yeah. Yeah. There'll be a lot of little startups that are trying to get into AI workflows um as well. Yeah. lot of hard decisions to be made. uh So I think let's just pivot over into risk and ethics like we usually do. um So I think uh AI automation is obviously not risk free. um

15:39
Over-automation is an issue that  we've come across in the AI consulting world quite a bit.  People build agents without governance and suddenly you've got  digital workers that are making decisions without the oversight. Yeah.  And that could really trigger, know, misconfigured permissions. That could become a real risk. So think of if an agent has access to something, it shouldn't. That's a compliance problem waiting to happen. So

16:08
you know, that is some exposure that could prevail, hopefully not. Yeah. Yeah. And models are getting better at minimizing hallucinations, but that's still a problem that's out there to be aware of, especially in regulated industries.  The agents are helpful, but again, they need supervision and inspection. Yeah. I mean, you know, when you think about, you know, the ethics, these agents log everything they do. So companies need to be

16:34
very careful not to drift into things like employee monitoring, for example,  especially if you have that documented. So, to really take a uh step back in this type of environment to understand  what the ethics  could impact  within your company. So, are you doing things ethically,  sound, not only just for... ah

17:01
industry standards, but what you have built in your culture as a company. Yep. Yeah. think kind of wrap that part of the segment governance, transparency and good policy matter just as much as the technology as you're rolling it out. Um, so, uh, Gary, want to pivot to, uh, kind of looking ahead? Yeah. So when we usually talk about these types of scenarios or technology, we always try to

17:29
ahead because that's what everyone always asks us, know, where do see this going? Where do you see that going? So, you know, if you look ahead, workspace studios, clearly version one of something much bigger. Um, so I don't think it's something to necessarily ignore. Yeah.  I think we're already starting to see this now, but we'll see agents with persistent memory, you know, a real digital coworker that learns your processes over time. That's already kind of, uh, out there.

17:57
Yeah, and industry templates are inevitable. So what I mean by that is think of healthcare agents, retail agents, logistics agents, kind of, you know, built in that templated environment and they're ready to deploy immediately. Yeah, like in a marketplace. Yeah. of those. and I think Google Meet will integrate directly into workspace force. So you'll be in a meeting and say, you know, agent hold the last

18:25
project summary and send follow ups and then it'll just happen. Yeah, especially if you had to do's or action items coming out of a  Google meeting  prior. It's  a good way to follow up when sometimes that doesn't always happen after the end of a meeting. know, digital workforce management is coming.  Tools to empower managers who have a team of agents  really is already in the works.  And Workspace Studio is one of the

18:53
one of the first to do this, which is a major step. And, uh, you know, I think you'll, you'll just see that continue to expand. Yeah, totally agree. And there'll be, um, thoughts and concerns around, uh, how to, how to structure your agent workforce, just, just like you do with the actual employees. Yeah. Good point. All right. So if we were to pull this all together and kind of wrap this particular episode, you know, I think we always talk about, you know, who's listening. You know, if you're a business leader,

19:22
Here's the move. You can start experimenting now, build a couple of agents,  automate a few workflows and really see where this component of AI and workspace gives you the leverage, not only for your team, but for your business overall. Yeah. And you can jump into workspace, but keep in mind you need to build governance early. So even if you start small,  like we talked about, treat your AI agents like employees, give them clear responsibilities, controlled access and

19:52
Don't forget regular oversight. Yes. Don't let them run. No, no, not at all. So think that's it for today's episode of the Macro AI podcast. Thank you so much to all of our listeners.  I'm blown away. We have thousands of downloads now,  more than we ever imagined.  And  tools like Workspace Studio is a big move. And we're only at the beginning of where these AI agents are headed. So more to come probably in future episodes.

20:21
Yeah, thanks for listening. Please don't forget to share the episode and send it to someone who lives in Gmail all day and give them some insight into how quickly things are changing. That's good idea. That's a good one, Scott.  All right. Well, thank you very much. We'll see you next time.