Google today starts rolling out an AI writing generator in Chrome. Essentially, at its heart, it's just the existing "Help me write" feature from Gmail, but now accessible to the wider web and powered by one of Google's newer Gemini AI models. The company announced the new tool back in January and it's still marked "experimental," which means you have to go in and enable it yourself.

First things first, jump over to the Chrome settings page for the "Experimental AI" page. You can find them there and enable your new writing feature, as well as Google's new automatic tab organizer (which, personally, I have not found particularly useful or smart so far) and the new Chrome theme manager). The AI writer is only available currently in English and appears to be compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux. Next, click anywhere in any text box and choose "Help me write." You can use this to compose something entirely new, and Gemini also will revise something you already have on hand.

If you are a Gemini Advanced subscriber, this new tool will not unlock an improved writing model, Google spokesperson said in response to our query. All of this is rather aimed at short content for emails or support requests, after all. Very short, so probably little of much use even for a larger model.

One nice feature is that the tool will consider the web site you are on when it makes its recommendations. "The tool will understand the context of the webpage you're on to suggest relevant content," Google engineering director Adriana Porter Felt says in today's announcement. “For example, if you’re writing a review for a pair of running shoes, Chrome will pull out key features from the product page that support your recommendation so it’s more valuable to potential shoppers.”

As with the “Help me write” feature in Gmail, it’s easy enough to change the length and tone of the results, too.

Of course, as a caveat, text, content, and the URL of the page that you're using the service on will be transmitted to Google under its existing privacy policy. Google explicitly notes that this information "is used to improve this feature, which includes generative model research and machine learning technologies," which includes a review process with humans in the loop. Caveat scriptor.