Google is putting even more generative AI tools into Gmail as part of its goal to further personalize user inboxes and streamline searches. On Thursday, the company announced a new “AI Inbox” tab, currently in a beta testing phase, that reads every message in a user’s Gmail and suggests a list of to-dos and key topics, based on what it summarizes. In Google’s example of what this AI Inbox could look like in Gmail, the new tab takes context from a user’s messages and suggests they reschedule their dentist appointment, reply to a request from their child’s sports coach, and pay an upcoming fee before the deadline. Also under the AI Inbox tab is a list of important topics worth browsing, nestled beneath the action items at the top. Each suggested to-do and topic links back to the original email for more context and for verification. Despite the continued spread of generative AI features, the underlying reliability of these tools remains iffy. Back in 2023, when Google’s chatbot was still called “Bard,” I tested the company’s nascent Gmail extension that tried to summarize my messages and search through the inbox for insights. At the time, this extension was a complete bust, with a bevy of incorrect responses. Since then, Google has worked to better its base AI model, called Gemini, and integrate those improvements into its suite of existing software services, including Gmail as well as Search. Despite the company's advances in AI, current Gmail users are still shown a disclaimer stating that Gemini “can make mistakes” when attempting to search an inbox and answer questions. For users who are concerned about their privacy, the information Google gleans by skimming through inboxes will not be used to improve the company's foundational AI models. “We didn’t just bolt AI onto Gmail,” says Blake Barnes, who leads the project for Google. “We built a secure privacy architecture, specifically for this moment.” He emphasizes that users can turn off Gmail’s new AI tools if they don’t want them. At the same time Google announced its AI Inbox, the company made free for all Gmail users multiple Gemini features that were previously available only to paying subscribers. This includes the Help Me Write tool, which generates emails from a user prompt, as well as AI Overviews for email threads, which essentially posts a TL;DR summary at the top of long message threads. Subscribers to Google's Ultra and Pro plans, which start at $20 a month, get two additional new features in their Gmail inbox. First, an AI proofreading tool that suggests more polished grammar and sentence structures. And second, an AI Overviews tool that can search your whole inbox and create relevant summaries on a topic, rather than just summarizing a single email thread. For the past few years, email providers and other software services have attempted to improve on the inbox experience using generative AI, with varying levels of success. The pitch from companies is often that large language models are allegedly better at deciphering user queries and crafting summaries, compared to traditional search methods and can generate more personalized outputs. When you have a Gmail account that’s over a decade old, like I do, there are gobs of data sitting there, ready to be sifted through. While generative AI is potentially helpful at wading through the murky bogs of mail and calendar events growing stale in my inbox, I need almost guaranteed accuracy for AI truly to be able to help streamline the day-to-day logistics and scheduling of my life. And that’s not something LLMs provide to users. I mean, the software literally comes with a baked-in accuracy disclaimer. I’ll be testing these features out, for sure, but at the same time confirming the contents of each task or suggestion and seeing what it might overlook. Can’t be missing those dentist appointments!
