Google’s workplace agent is out, but questions abound

Google today introduced Gemini Agent, its first workplace personal agent. But enterprises -- even those already in the tech giant’s ecosystem -- will need to ask themselves whether they are ready for AI agents to access their data and context, and whether agents can handle the everyday processes and permissions that employees are used to managing.Gemini Agent is provisioned with an enterprise’s business context and can use that information for knowledge work, answering questions, creating content and coding -- all from a single prompt box.Google released the agent during its Gemini at Work 2026 conference in Mountain View, along with a new workflow integration that operates directly inside Google Workspace and connects to its widely used enterprise productivity apps, such Docs, Drive and SheetsThe vendor is the first frontier AI provider to release an agent that connects to enterprise workflows, illustrating how the cloud provider is differentiating itself in the AI race.Related:Meta expands Muse to small businessesDigital workspace“This is a play on digital workspace,” said Mark Beccue, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget. “It’s an everyday use of a personal assistant in your everyday work.”While Google is the first frontier AI developer with a workplace personal agent, rivals such as Meta and Microsoft have launched their own digital workers. Meta introduced the Muse personal agent last month; it carries out long-running tasks for consumers and could appeal to small businesses. Microsoft, meanwhile, introduced Copilot Autopilot, an AI digital teammate for enterprise teams.“It’s the lowest hanging fruit to go after digital workspace,” Beccue said. “It’s really the actualization of an AI interface. We’re going to tell AI what we want to do, and it’s going to do it. That’s where we’re headed.”Enterprise dataHowever, by going in this direction, Google, Microsoft, and even Meta are moving toward a world in which AI agents need access to enterprise data. And given the recent anxiety about AI agents going out of control, some enterprises might be skeptical about permitting Gemini or other models to access to that data.However, David Nicholson, an analyst at Futurum Group, said enterprises have to set aside some of their skepticism to realize the power of AI.“We can’t unlock the real value of what AI can do for an enterprise without the enterprise opening up the safe and letting the agents get in and dig around and have access,” he said.He added that while some enterprises might pilot Gemini Agent by allowing it access only to some aspects of their organizations, others might go all in. And likely, enterprises that are already using Google Workspace will have no problem allowing the Gemini Agent to access employees’ Gmail, Google Slides and Calendar apps.Related:Prompt: AI agents can act. It’s unclear if enterprises can stop them.“All of that provides the foundational context that seems to be table stakes that you need to expose for certain kinds of operations,” Nicholson said.“The next question, though, is ‘what about my stuff that has nothing to do with Google?’” he added, noting that enterprises also need to consider data residing in SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, or other big enterprise environments.Permission required and costMoreover, even if enterprises allow Gemini Agent access to these other environments, a question of permissions and access arises. If the agent tries to access SAP or Microsoft, for example, would it have permission to proceed? Enterprise workers on Microsoft platforms sometimes are restricted from accessing Google files without specific approval.“It’s not interoperability between what Google Docs does; it's permissions by a company,” Beccue said. “That’s a general theme, that you could say security is costing us productivity. How are agents going to navigate that? Because these are permissions by organizations, not vendors.”Related:CoreWeave connects AI coding tools to infrastructure intelligenceAnother challenge is cost, Beccue said. Google said enterprises can choose between Gemini models and Anthropic Claude when using Gemini Agent. However, some of the models are expensive to run. Moreover, having users choose the model they use would require a high level of management and knowledge of token-cost finance, Beccue said.“It means that we're learning how to be agent prompters or assistant prompters. Now … everybody's responsible for finance?” he continued. “How are organizations going to handle all of this?”Challenges like these expose that “when you’re starting to deploy workflow agents, you’re not going to be successful on the very first go around, especially in the complex multiapplication environment, where this agent is going to be bridging the gap,” said Sid Nag, founder and analyst at Tekonyx. “To achieve the level of exactness, it’s going to take some time.”While organizations already in a Google environment might choose Gemini Agent, others might choose to stay closer to their data, Nicholson said.“It’s the idea of maybe you want to own all of that intellectual property as a separate thing that’s decoupled from one of the big players that might lock you in,” he said.Despite all these questions about ownership and permissions, Google’s release is a step in the right direction, Nag said.“It’s a great offering and a great move by Google, integrating their frontier capability with an agentic capability that’s actionable,” he said. It's an overlay middleware API,” he said.Google said Gemini Agent can be accessed from any device, including web, IOS and Android-based mobile devices. It also runs in the cloud and provides a single set of memories, context and a personalization graph. The agent can also create subagents, or job-specific agents, to do tasks.About the AuthorNews Writer, AI BusinessEsther Shittu has covered AI technologies and industry trends since 2021. As co-host of the Targeting AI podcast, she talks with experts, thought leaders and practitioners exploring critical AI developments. Before AI Business, she wrote for SearchEnterpriseAI, the New York Daily News, Bklyner and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. When she's not diving deep into the world of AI, she spends her time on passion projects and raising her three daughters.