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Dropbox dropped two new products today that unsurprisingly focus on AI. Dropbox AI scans your documents offering summaries and answers, and the more ambitious Dropbox Dash serves as a search bar for your life.
Dropbox AI is the simpler of the two; it uses AI to create file previews with summaries and Q&A about your docs. With one click, you can get a concise explanation of contracts and meeting recordings, or ask it questions about a specific file and it’ll read the doc for you.
CEO Drew Houston said in a promo video, “Now you can pull up a file, ask it anything, and Dropbox will give you an answer.”
Meanwhile, Dropbox Dash has a much broader scope, essentially serving as a souped-up, AI-powered version of Apple Spotlight search, Windows Search or third-party launcher apps like Alfred.
Dropbox wants Dash to be your go-to for anything you need to know – locally or online.
“Dropbox Dash is AI-powered universal search that connects all of your tools, content and apps in one search bar,”
the company said.
“With connectors to major platforms like Google Workspace, Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce and more, you can find everything fast.”
The idea is to give customers a ChatGPT-like dialog box that answers questions about all the personal and work-related content in their digital universe.
Along with being a well-known search engine, Dropbox Dash also exists as a browser extension. The URLs that are accessed are collected and organized into “Stacks”; which act similarly to how playlists store songs.
The Dash extension offers a start-page dashboard displaying search results, Stacks, shortcuts, and other useful items which are suggested by the AI. To help provide the best results, users can utilize Dash for their business such as when the next company holiday is.
Relying on a business enterprise with a significant amount of data requires a great deal of trust.
To demonstrate that they are ready to fulfill this responsibility, Dropbox has given the assurance that the data won’t be passed on to marketers and that they will be open and sincere in their dealings.
The company has expressed that “securing the privacy of our customers, being transparent, and controlling bias in AI technology are even more critical at this point in time when talking about Artificial Intelligence.”
It would not be a surprise to me if the big players in the field of technology, such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google, have already been creating versions of a AI-backed search box to be built in to their operating systems.
With Dropbox’s goal to create Dash, there may only be a small time frame of opportunity to make this a successful venture before they are overshadowed by the major tech companies.
Dropbox Pro customers based in the United States can now access the Alpha version of their AI-powered file previews.
Moreover, it will be initiated for a subset of Dropbox Teams. Finally, you can sign up to join the waitlist for Dropbox Dash.
