Email remains one of the primary means of communication for businesses around the world. While tools like Slack and Teams have reduced the reliance on the 55-year-old technology, receiving your marching orders from your inbox isn’t going away any time soon.
Luckily, email has evolved substantially over the years, with recent developments in AI technology making the brutality of scrolling through a long email thread infinitely easier for the average Gmail user.
My Gmail storage was almost full, so I cleaned it up instead of upgrading to Google One
I freed up space without deleting important emails
AI Overviews in Gmail
It’s not just for search
There are few things worse than having to read an entire email thread to find the important information, particularly if you’re a slow reader like me.
After one or two emails, your brain just tunes out, and you reread the same introduction over and over until you give up and assume whatever it was actually wasn’t that important after all.
That is, until Google rolled out Gemini in Gmail, which saw the popular AI model integrated into the even more popular email service to streamline the communication process for its nearly 2 billion users.
One of the best features of Gemini in Gmail is AI Overviews, which you’ve likely come across when searching on Google. The tool can summarize search results, so you don’t have to dig through websites to find what you’re looking for.
In the same way, AI Overviews in Gmail provides you with a simple, bullet point list of important key takeaways, so you don’t have to riffle through your inbox to find exactly what you’re looking for.
What about AI errors?
It’s always good to double-check important stuff
You’ve probably heard a lot about AI models like Gemini making errors on a regular basis. One of them even deleted the entire database of a company in direct defiance of specific instructions. But hey, at least it apologized afterward.
Given all that, it’s understandable to wonder whether your email communications are safe in the hands of AI Overviews. And unfortunately, there’s not much Google or I can say right now to alleviate those concerns.
Google and Gmail both admit that Gemini could make errors, with a small warning beneath the AI Overviews in Gmail that reads “By Gemini; there may be mistakes.”
So, no, you cannot 100% trust the AI Overviews in Gmail, but in my experience, they don’t get much wrong.
Still, for important stuff like meeting times and logistics details, you should probably do a quick double-check. But for basic communication, relying on these summaries shouldn’t give you too much stress.
What else can Gemini do in Gmail?
A lot more than summarizing
AI Overviews in Gmail is one of the more convenient smart features in the popular email service, but it’s definitely not the only one.
Gemini has been integrated into Gmail in many ways, and you can use it to streamline your entire email process.
Here are some of the other smart features in Gmail that you can use to make writing and reading emails easier:
- Smart Compose. Gmail will give you suggestions for what to write while you’re composing an email, based on your tone of voice and previous email interactions.
- Smart Reply. By clicking the “/” button in an email reply, you can have Gemini write a reply for you by inputting natural language prompts.
- Automatic Categorization. Gmail can automatically categorize your inbox with important messages, so you know which ones should be opened and which ones can go to the trash.
- Nudges. Gmail will remind you to respond to emails that end in questions with a simple nudge, which can easily be dismissed if you don’t want it.
As you can imagine, Google is always testing new features for its products, and Gmail is no different, so it’s safe to assume that more and more AI tools will roll out for the email service in the near future.
How to enable AI Overview and other smart features in Gmail
Take your pick of smart features
Google launched Gemini for Gmail at the start of this year, but there’s a good chance you haven’t gotten started with it, so we’re here to help you enable the feature right now.
For starters, go to the Settings menu in Gmail. On desktop, that’s the gear icon in the upper-right corner. On mobile, click the three-line menu in the upper-right corner and scroll down until you get to settings.
In this menu, click the Google Workspace smart features option, and make sure the Smart features in Google Workspace toggle is clicked. This will ensure that AI Overview in Gmail appears for your account.
Beyond that, the Settings menu also has tick boxes for smart replies and smart compose, so make sure everything is checked off if you want to take advantage.
AI for convenience
It does some stuff really well
There’s a lot of controversy surrounding AI like Gemini. From job displacement to environmental impacts, the technology has seen its fair share of protests.
Still, reading and summarizing emails feels like exactly what this technology should be doing. It shouldn’t be making art, it shouldn’t be creating music.
But if I can save a few hours a week by not having to read through all the “yours sincerely” and “hope this finds you well,” that seems like a good use of AI.
