Gemini

You already know the model picker, attachments, and connected apps from the Chat agents course. The features below are where Gemini stops being a chatbot and starts being a tool that does the work.

Most of these features sit behind a Google AI Pro or Workspace Business plan. If you only have free Gemini, this is read-now, try-when-you-upgrade.

Canvas: turn data into a tool

Canvas is the side-by-side mode where Gemini builds the actual tool while you chat with it. Attach a file, ask for a dashboard, and watch a working web app appear next to your conversation. You iterate by talking to the result (“add a date filter”, “swap the bar chart for a line chart”, “color it by region instead”).

The point is not the chart itself. The point is that things that used to need a developer ticket now happen in two minutes, by you, on whatever data you happen to have. A messy CSV becomes a usable view. A doc becomes a deck (Canvas exports to Google Slides). A rough idea becomes a clickable prototype you can show somebody.

The mental shift: stop thinking of Gemini as a chat that writes code, start thinking of Canvas as the place you build small tools you keep using. The official help page covers how to switch it on and what it can build: Canvas in Gemini Apps Help.

Building in Canvas is cheap; maintaining a small tool is the same work it has always been. Build a lot, keep only what you use a second time, throw the first version away without regret.

Deep Research: the long-running investigation

Deep Research is Gemini’s mode for the kind of question that would normally cost you forty minutes of tab juggling. Competitive landscape, regulatory overview, summarising what changed in a field this quarter. You ask the question, Gemini drafts a research plan you can edit (rename topics, drop sources, add angles), and once you approve it, it spends ten to twenty minutes searching the web, reading pages, cross-checking, and producing a structured report with citations.

It is not the right tool for “what is X”. It is the right tool for “give me a structured brief on X covering Y, Z, and W, with sources I can audit”. Use it the way you would use a junior analyst: clear scope, named deliverables, sources you trust.

What else ships with Gemini

A few features ride along with Gemini that are not strictly Canvas or Deep Research, but worth knowing exist.

• Audio overviews. Turn a long report (or any long doc) into a two-host podcast-style summary. Useful for walks, gym, commute. Same feature behind NotebookLM, now built into Gemini.
• Image and video generation. Imagen for images, Veo for short video clips. Live in the chat now, no separate tool. Real for “I need a placeholder visual right now”, not for production assets.
• Live mode. Real-time voice or video with the model. Useful for screen-share style “what am I looking at” or “talk me through this code”. Niche, but stunning the first time. The Talking to your AI course goes deeper on when live voice is and is not the right tool.

Hands-on

Build an interactive dashboard from this data: charts for trends over time, a breakdown by region, and a date filter. Add a summary card at the top with total revenue.

Brief me on how AI agents are being used in HR tech in 2026, with three concrete vendor examples.

Summarize regulatory changes affecting EU SaaS in the last 6 months.

Reflect

• Where in your week are you doing slow research that Deep Research would handle while you do something else? Pick the next one and put it on the calendar.
• What is one small internal tool (a dashboard, a tracker, a quick interactive view of some data you keep in a spreadsheet) you have always wanted but never asked a developer to build? Could Canvas get you a usable v1 today?