Google is continuing to shovel AI tools at you in the hope you actually start using them, adding various AI functions to its most popular products in the hope that this time, they’ll stick.
This time, it’s Gmail’s turn to get some new “helpful” AI functions, as Google is rolling out AI summaries for your Gmail emails (via 9to5 Google).
There are some useful features here — if you pay for them
Credit where it’s due to Google, there are some very useful features included in this update. Searching through your Gmail inbox has become an art in itself, and there’s real skill involved in pulling small details from your memory to narrow down the search to one particular email.
Say you remember an email with a friend where they recommended a certain color of crayon. But, of course, you’re big on your Crayola newsletters, so searching for just “crayons” won’t help. You could just narrow it down to your friend’s email, but you’re constantly nattering about crayons, so that won’t help. Aha, you can vaguely remember when it was, so you can add a date range too. Now you’re getting there.
Credit: Google
It is tiresome, and sifting through data like this is one thing AI is good at. So it makes sense you can ask Gemini to do the hard work for you. You can speak to Gemini in normal conversational language, like the image above, and the AI overview will pull up a bunch of potential matches, saving you time.
That is very helpful. The catch is it’s only available for those paying for the Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions. The former costs $20 a month, and the latter an eye-watering $250 a month. Of course, if you bought a Pixel 10 Pro then you have a year’s access to AI Pro for free, so that’s a minor bonus to an otherwise rather meager bonus.
What do free users get? They get access to AI summaries of long email chains. Which is, admittedly, another good feature, but one that’s likely to be useful less often than the first.
Also included in this update were the Help Me Write, Suggested Replies, and Proofread features. Previously only selectively available, these three features will now be more widely available. Help Me Write and Suggested Replies are available for free, whereas Proofread is only available for subscribers to the above two plans, again.
