Gmail’s New AI Inbox: Powered by Gemini, Not Your Data
▼ Summary
– Google is introducing a new ‘AI Inbox’ feature in Gmail, powered by Gemini, to summarize emails and provide a personalized briefing.
– The feature aims to address the problem of high email volume by allowing users to ask questions about their inbox and get summaries of long conversations.
– AI Inbox helps prioritize emails by identifying important contacts based on factors like frequency of communication and inferred relationships.
– The AI Overview summaries are rolling out globally at no cost, while the full AI Inbox is initially available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the United States.
– Google states users can disable these AI features and promises it will not use their emails to train its AI models.
Google is introducing a significant update to Gmail, designed to tackle the overwhelming volume of emails users face daily. This new feature, called AI Inbox, leverages the power of the company’s Gemini technology to provide users with a streamlined and prioritized view of their messages. A key point of emphasis is user privacy, with Google stating explicitly that this system will not use personal email content to train its underlying artificial intelligence models.
The core of this update is the integration of AI Overviews directly into the inbox interface. This tool automatically generates concise summaries of lengthy email threads, allowing users to grasp the essential points of a conversation without scrolling through every single reply. This is particularly useful in professional settings where email chains can become extensive and time-consuming to parse. The summaries aim to cut through the noise, presenting the critical information at a glance.
Beyond summaries, the update introduces a dedicated AI Inbox section. This area, positioned above the standard inbox folder on the sidebar, functions as a personalized daily briefing. It actively highlights actionable items like to-dos and surfaces important updates that require your attention. The system intelligently prioritizes messages by identifying key contacts, such as frequent correspondents or people in your address book, and can infer relationships based on the context within your emails.
Initially, the full AI Inbox experience will be available to subscribers of Google’s AI Pro and Ultra plans in the United States. However, the AI Overview conversation summaries are being made available to all Gmail users globally at no additional cost. For those who prefer the traditional inbox view, Google has confirmed that these AI-driven features can be disabled in the settings. The company reiterates its commitment to privacy, assuring users that their personal email data will not be utilized to further train or improve the Gemini models powering these new tools.
(Source: Bleeping Computer)
