Google is bringing its Gemini AI directly into your inbox to help you manage messages faster. On Thursday, the company announced several new upgrades, including a feature that summarizes long email chains. If you find yourself buried in a thread with dozens of replies, the AI will now pull out the most important points so you can get the gist of the conversation without reading every single line.
These updates will roll out in phases over the coming weeks. Google noted that some of these features will be turned on by default. This means that if you prefer to handle your emails the old-fashioned way, you will have to go into your settings and manually turn off the AI. Along with summaries, Google is adding “AI Overviews” to Gmail. This is the same technology that people already see at the top of their Google Search results.
The company is also replacing its old “Smart Replies” with a new tool called “Suggested Replies.” While the old version gave simple one-word answers, this new version looks at the context of your entire conversation to create more detailed, one-click responses. Additionally, Google is improving its proofreading tool to help users fix grammar mistakes and make their writing more concise before they hit send.
These changes come as Google works to integrate its Gemini AI across its major products. With over 3 billion users, Gmail gives the company a massive advantage over rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. Google wants to make sure its users stay within its ecosystem rather than turning to other AI tools to write or organize their lives.
This strategy is working for the company’s bottom line. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, recently beat Apple in market value for the first time since 2019. This follows a long rally that made Alphabet one of the best-performing tech stocks last year. However, the competition is still growing fast. OpenAI hit a private valuation of $500 billion late last year, and on Wednesday Anthropic announced its valuation has reached $350 billion.
