Google is turning Chrome into an AI-powered coworker in the workplace

As part of a slate of Google Cloud Next announcements on Wednesday, the company shared plans to bring “auto-browsing” proxy capabilities to Chrome users on enterprise, along with enhanced security measures.

With automated browsing, Chrome users can leverage Gemini to understand live context in open browser tabs, and then use AI to handle various tasks such as travel booking, data entry, meeting scheduling, and others related to web-based work.

Google suggests the tool can be used for things like entering information into a company’s preferred CRM based on content in a Google Doc, comparing vendor prices across tabs, summarizing a candidate’s portfolio before an interview, pulling key data from a competitor’s product page, and more.

The company notes that its workflow will still require a “human in the loop,” meaning the user will have to manually review and confirm AI inputs before taking any final action.

However, the idea is to help speed up these types of more tedious tasks to free up people to focus on what Google refers to as more “strategic work.”

That’s the biggest promise from AI proponents: that you’ll get your time back using this new technology. But in practice, studies have shown that artificial intelligence does not reduce work, but rather intensifies it. It remains to be seen how this will be implemented at an enterprise level as AI becomes a standard part of the workflow. Presumably, this may mean that managers expect people to be able to accomplish more tasks in less time.

Google says the new feature will initially be available to Workspace users in the United States, as part of Google’s push to integrate its artificial intelligence into one of its most widely used applications in the workplace, the web browser that almost everyone uses. It can be enabled via a policy, and Google states that enterprise prompts will not be used to train its AI models. (A revelation that has become increasingly necessary these days, since Meta uses its employees’ keystrokes to train its AI.)

As in the consumer-facing version of this feature, Workspace users will be able to save their most common workflows for later use. These “skills”, as they are called, can be checked out either by typing a forward slash (“/”) or by clicking the plus sign to access the desired skill.

In addition to integrating AI into Chrome, Google is touting its ability to detect unauthorized AI tools in the workplace via Chrome Enterprise Premium. It is now expanding these capabilities to help IT teams search for compromised browser extensions or other AI services — specifically “anomalous agent activity.”

Google is right to position this as a security feature, but it has another advantage as well. The tech giant is essentially leveraging the company’s IT to lock out any other AI agents that could take root in the enterprise world organically. Years ago, this was the number of web services that first established themselves in the workplace, amid the employee-led “Enterprise 2.0” rush to adopt new technology like cloud storage, collaborative documents, or file sharing.

This new feature, which Google calls “Shadow IT Threat Detection,” will give IT teams visibility into the use of both blocked and unauthorized Gen AI and SaaS sites across their organization.

IT teams will also receive a “Gemini Summary” of Chrome Enterprise release notes and other AI-powered suggestions. This will show important changes, new policies, and upcoming shutdowns, as well as recommendations on things like configuring new settings or reviewing managed browsers.

The company also announced an expanded partnership with Okta to secure the proxy workplace with additional features to reduce session hijacking and other protections. It is also upgrading its security controls for extensions and introducing Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) integration to help organizations enforce consistent security policies.