Google is trying out an AI Inbox in Gmail that reads your emails, summarizes them, and suggests what you should do. This feature is in beta and is designed to help you manage your tasks better and find important information quickly.
Summaries and Suggestions from Emails
With the new AI Inbox, Gmail takes a look at your messages and offers suggestions. For instance, it may prompt you to reschedule a dental appointment or reply to your child’s coach. Each suggestion connects back to the original email, so you can easily check the details.
Google pointed out that while AI has come a long way, it can still make mistakes. So, to keep users informed, a disclaimer warns that the AI may misinterpret certain messages.
Privacy Protections for Users
Worried about privacy? Google assures that the AI won’t use your information to train its models. Blake Barnes, leading the project, emphasized that they built a secure privacy framework to protect user data. Plus, you can turn off the AI tools if you’re not comfortable with them.
By making this AI Inbox available, Google is also rolling out several new features that were previously only for paying users. These include the Help Me Write tool that helps draft emails and AI Overviews giving brief summaries of email threads.
- Help Me Write tool for drafting
- AI Overviews for email threads
- Proofreading tool for subscribers
Updated Features for Subscribers and Free Users
In addition to the new AI Inbox, users on paid plans can access extra features. These include an AI proofreading tool that helps improve grammar and an expanded AI Overview that can summarize entire topics instead of just single email threads.
Google is clearly investing in developing better tools for Gmail, but the integration of AI brings both opportunities and challenges. Users can look forward to streamlined workflows, but they should remain cautious about the data they share.
