Google is announcing a modern AI inbox view in Gmail that, instead of presenting emails in a customary list, uses artificial intelligence to offer personalized to-dos and summaries of topics you may want to track in your emails.
This is potentially a huge change in how you navigate Gmail, especially if you have a lot to organize or if (like me) you already employ your inbox as a to-do list. In the AI demo video, Inbox suggests tasks such as rescheduling a dentist appointment, responding to a coach, and paying a sports tournament fee, and also summarizes topics to catch up on, such as a team’s soccer season and a family reunion.
Google is initially rolling out its AI Inbox service to browser-based “trusted testers” in the US, and it will be available to individual Gmail accounts first – it can’t be used with Workspace accounts yet. There’s no way yet to flag whether you’ve done any of the suggested items – according to Blake Barnes, Google’s vice president of Gmail product is working on it – which means Gmail won’t yet know if, for example, you call someone based on Gmail’s recommended action rather than sending them an email.
Barnes also says there is no limit to the number of to-dos Gmail can suggest. While Inbox’s AI tries to prioritize what’s critical to you based on signals like who you’re emailing and what you’re replying to the fastest, too many tasks to do may just perpetuate inbox overload, but with a modern design.
Still, considering how much of our lives flow through our inboxes, if the Inbox AI is at least somewhat successful in making timely recommendations and summarizing critical emails, this feature could be quite useful.
All individual Gmail users also receive personalized suggested replies, AI overviews for thread summaries, and Google’s “Help Me Writing” tool – all features that Google previously included in paid plans – at no additional cost. US subscribers to the Google One AI Pro ($19.99 per month) and Ultra ($249.99 per month) plans will get the grammar correction feature, as well as AI overviews in search results, both available in browsers. (Google’s example for the latter is: “Who was the plumber who gave me a quote for a bathroom renovation last year?”).
If you don’t want to employ Gmail’s AI features, you can turn them off (though this disables other intelligent features like spell checking). The company also says it does not employ Gmail content to train its Gemini AI models.