AI Is Coming for Your Gmail

Google is giving Gmail a new AI-powered command center meant to tell you what matters in your inbox before you go looking for it. The company on Thursday detailed a "personalized AI Inbox," natural-language search summaries, and a built-in proofreading assistant, while also making several existing AI tools free to all users, per TechCrunch.

• The new AI Inbox appears as an optional tab with two main sections: "Suggested to-dos," which surfaces messages that seem to require action, like a bill due or a prescription issue, and "Topics to catch up on," which groups status updates such as delivery notices and financial statements into their own categories.

• "This is simply a new view you can toggle in and out of as you please," says Blake Barnes, Google's VP of product, stressing that the classic inbox remains. The feature is rolling out first to "trusted testers," as TechCrunch labels them, and will expand in the near future.
• Gmail is also adding "AI Overviews" to its search feature for subscribers to Google's paid AI Pro and Ultra plans, which Wired notes start at $20 a month. Instead of relying on keywords and poring through multiple emails, users can ask a question in natural language—for example, "Who was the plumber that gave me a quote last year?"—and get an AI-generated answer pulled from relevant messages, per TechCrunch. "We scour every email in your inbox, and we give you the answer ... right at the top," says Barnes, adding that Google doesn't use this personal content to train its core models.
• A new "Proofread" tool, also limited to paid tiers, scans drafts for clarity and structure, offering one-click edits for word choice, brevity, and use of active voice, in a move that puts Gmail more directly in competition with services like Grammarly or users pasting text into ChatGPT.
• At the same time, Google is widening access to earlier AI features: "Help Me Write" (which can generate messages from prompts), AI summaries of long email threads, and context-aware "Suggested Replies" that match a user's tone are now rolling out to all Gmail users, not just paying customers.
• The new Gmail features will only be available initially in the US in English, though Google says that will expand later in 2026 to other countries and languages, per the AP.