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Google's Mixboard: Innovation or Just Another AI Toy?

·375 words·2 mins·
Pini Shvartsman
Author
Pini Shvartsman
Architecting the future of software, cloud, and DevOps. I turn tech chaos into breakthrough innovation, leading teams to extraordinary results in our AI-powered world. Follow for game-changing insights on modern architecture and leadership.

Google just dropped Mixboard – a collaborative space where you can visually design and remix AI workflows. Picture a digital whiteboard where you drag and drop AI components, connect them into processes, and collaborate with others in real time.

👉 Try it here: labs.google.com/mixboard/welcome

What Mixboard promises
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On paper, it’s an interesting idea:

  • Build no-code AI workflows in minutes
  • Mix prompts, models, and data sources like Lego bricks
  • Co-create with teammates, live, inside the same board

Basically, Miro + Zapier + Google’s AI, wrapped in pastel gradients.

What the internet thinks
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The early reviews are… mixed:

  • TechCrunch calls it an AI-powered mood board app for brainstorming and visual inspiration
  • TechRadar says it feels like a creative playground – good for rough ideas, not production work
  • Yahoo/Tech frames it as Google’s Pinterest with AI – neat, but not exactly revolutionary
  • Everyone notes it’s still experimental and could easily vanish into the infamous Google Graveyard

Practical use cases to try
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If you do want to kick the tires, here are a few practical things you could try inside Mixboard:

💡 Brainstorming assistant
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Generate campaign ideas, blog outlines, or product concepts with connected AI components.

📝 Meeting notes generator
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Connect transcripts to a summarization flow for automatic meeting summaries.

🤖 Prototype a mini-agent
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Chain simple AI steps together: research → summarize → draft email.

📚 Team prompt library
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Collect prompts visually and let colleagues remix them for different use cases.

The bigger pattern
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But let’s be honest: the bigger story isn’t Mixboard itself. It’s the pattern.

Google is in a frenzy of shipping AI experiments – Bard, Gemini, NotebookLM, AI Overviews, and now this. Each one launches with shiny marketing, early adopters poke at it, and then… we wait to see if it sticks.

The uncomfortable truth
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The future of AI won’t be decided by who throws out the most demos. It’ll be decided by who makes AI boringly reliable, useful, and indispensable.

Mixboard could be a hint of that future – or just another pastel-colored experiment destined to fade away.

Another AI tool. Another welcome page. Another maybe.

Wake me up when Google ships something that lasts.


Try it yourself: Visit labs.google.com/mixboard/welcome to explore Google’s latest AI experiment.

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