If you wanted to use all of Google's AI features in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Meet, and the rest of the Workspace suite, you previously had to pay an additional $20 per user per month for the Gemini Business plan. Starting Tuesday, it's free. Google is bringing all its AI capabilities to its Workspace app for free, continuing its race against Microsoft, OpenAI and others to build the AI-powered office suite of the future.

But there's a catch: In making this change, Google is raising prices on all Workspace plans. Jerry Dischler, president of Google Cloud Applications, told me that the company will pay about $2 more per user per month for AI-enabled workspaces than before. (These numbers aren't exact because the company's contracts are complex and varied, but the base subscription price was $12 per month and is now $14.)

Workspace AI includes features like email summaries in Gmail, generative design for spreadsheets and videos, automated meeting note-taking, the powerful NotebookLM research assistant, and authoring tools across applications. It also has access to the Gemini bot itself, which is probably Google's most powerful AI tool; the bot can do what a standard chatbot does, but can also help you find information, search everything, and more.

Dischler noted that Google is the most vertically integrated AI product out there, but that only matters if people use the entire system. Now, everyone can. “Most of the time, when we talk to companies using AI, their biggest barrier is cost,” he said. "That's why they go in so cautiously. It's like, 'Wow, that's a lot of money, let's prove it's worth it.' "Okay, now you've got artificial intelligence. You've got this value." Various application roadmaps have also changed, he said, and new features will start to be released at a rapid pace.

Google isn't the only company to eliminate fees for AI upgrades: Microsoft announced in November that its own Copilot Pro AI feature, which was also previously a $20 monthly upgrade, would become part of a standard Microsoft 365 subscription. So far, this is only available for individual and family subscriptions, and only in a few places. But these companies understand that now is their time to teach people new ways to use their products and win new customers in the process. They're betting that the cost of rolling out all these AI capabilities to everyone will be worth it in the long run.