Google adds new AI features to Gmail, turning it into a personal assistant

More artificial intelligence is being implanted into Gmail as Google tries to turn the world's most popular email service into a personal assistant that can improve writing, summarize far-flung information buried in inboxes, and deliver daily to-do lists. The new AI features announced could herald a pivotal moment for Gmail, a service that transformed email when it was introduced nearly 22 years ago. Since then, Gmail has amassed more than 3 billion users to become nearly as ubiquitous as Google's search engine. Gmail's new AI options will only be available in English within the United States for starters, but the company is promising to expand the technology to other countries and other languages as the year unfolds. The most broadly available tool will be a “Help Me Write” option designed to learn a user's writing style so it can personalize emails and make real-time suggestions on how to burnish the message. Google is also offering subscribers who pay for its Pro and Ultra services access to technology that mirrors the AI Overviews that have been built into its search engine since 2023. The expansion will enable subscribers to pose conversational questions in Gmail's search bar to get instant answers about information they are trying to retrieve from their inboxes. In what could turn into another revolutionary step, “AI Inbox” is also being rolled out to a subset of “trusted testers” in the U.S. When it's turned on, the function will sift through inboxes and suggest to-do lists and topics that users might want to explore. “This is us delivering on Gmail proactively having your back,” said Blake Barnes, a Google vice president of product. All of the new technology is tied to Google's latest AI model, Gemini 3, which was unleashed into its search engine late last year. The upgrade, designed to turn Google search into a “thought partner,” has been so well received that it prompted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose company makes the popular ChatGPT chatbot, to issue a “code red” following its release. This article was provided by The Associated Press.