About two years ago, Google practically force-fed artificial intelligence to the masses when it began showing AI-generated responses to people’s questions at the top of search results. Now the company is taking a similar tack by adding AI into another ubiquitously used service, Google Mail.
Google this month began rolling out a suite of new tools relying on generative AI, the technology driving chatbots, to help users manage their bloated inboxes and speed up the process of writing email. Some of the features are free, while others require paying a subscription.
Gmail users now can look up emails by typing a question, such as “What’s the name of the job recruiter I met last month?” Google is also testing a new type of inbox, set for release later this year, that automatically pulls together a to-do list based on tasks discussed inside emails. In addition, Google unveiled tools to streamline writing, including an automatic proofreader and response generator.
If the new AI technology becomes widely adopted by Gmail users, this could be the biggest change to email, our most steadfast web service, in decades. It may transform the way people manually check their inboxes all day long into a more streamlined experience, an overview that people look at periodically.
All of this, of course, has implications for privacy. To make the new features work, Google’s AI assistant Gemini needs access to a user’s entire inbox. The company insists that while Gemini systems analyze our emails, there are protections in place so its employees do not read them. To understand what this means for us, I interviewed a Google executive overseeing Gmail as well as privacy experts.
And to assess whether the tools are worth the potential trade-off in privacy, I tested Google’s AI-ified Gmail for a week. I found a few of these features, especially the automatic to-do list generated from my inbox, very useful, but I didn’t care for the tools that sped up writing. Ultimately, I’m on the fence about whether I will opt to share even more data with Google to use these features once they are all fully released.
Google is testing the AI Inbox with a small set of users, but when the feature arrives publicly in the coming months, I think lots of people, especially busy parents and office workers, will find it useful.
Here’s a rundown of first impressions of the new tools and answers to important questions about privacy going forward. Let’s start with the most important new feature, AI Inbox, which will be broadly released in the coming months.
A new AI-powered inbox
Managing an email inbox has become a tedious chore. When someone sends you an email, you can read and reply to it, delete it or ignore it. The option of ignoring an email takes the least effort, but unread notes pile up over time and add to stress. (Case in point: My Gmail app icon currently shows a red bubble for 131,000 unread emails.)
Google’s new AI Inbox fundamentally changes the way people check email. It gives a high-level overview of what you need to know and do today, based on recent emails, by looking at conversations and creating action items and summaries of topics.
The AI Inbox offered me respite from my chaotic inbox last week. I had recently exchanged emails with a local preschool discussing enrollment for my daughter. Around the same time, her pediatrician had sent an email asking me to fill out a questionnaire. But throughout the day, my inbox became cluttered with marketing messages from retailers and other unsolicited emails.
When I clicked on the AI Inbox tab, Google’s AI reminded me of my recent conversations and presented a to-do list: Respond to the preschool about enrollment and fill out the questionnaire for the pediatrician. None of the other noise in my inbox was there.
Free tools
Google is now making free the following Gmail tools that were previously available only to users who paid subscriptions to use its AI:
— Suggested replies with personalization. Gemini now will analyze a message and generate a bespoke response based on