Google Docs will now check your grammar using AI

In this day and age, almost every application — whether on a phone or a computer — will let users know if they misspelled something. But, unless you have a third-party extension or keyboard installed, such as Grammarly, grammar mistakes will not be automatically caught.

That’s all about to change for Google Docs users as the search giant has announced the availability of a new grammar suggestions feature for its web-based word processor. With it enabled, the application will use a unique machine-translation technique to help identify problems within a written piece of work.

Google explains what types of grammatical issues its AI can help correct:

Our AI can catch several different types of corrections, from simple grammatical rules like how to use articles in a sentence (like “a” versus “an”), to more complicated grammatical concepts such as how to use subordinate clauses correctly. Machine learning will help improve this capability over time to detect trickier grammar issues. And because it’s built natively in Docs, it’s highly secure and reliable.

As you can see from the above image, Google Docs places a blue line under any word or phrase it identifies as having a spelling or grammatical issue. By clicking on one of these, a tool will appear offering possible corrections. These suggestions can then be accepted or ignored by the user. But remember, this sort of AI can still be finicky and might not always suggest the proper corrections. It’s up to the individual to make the final decision on whether or not to use Google Docs’ corrections.

Grammar suggestions in Docs is launching today, but only for G Suite customers. Administrators can sign their domain up for the Early Adopter Program to gain access to the new feature. The company has yet to announce when this new tool will make its way to standard Google accounts.

Find additional G Suite-related announcements from Cloud Next 18 on Google’s blog.

Up next: 10 best translation apps for Android!