When Google’s AI assistant launches an email summary card, Gemini has gained a more prominent location with the launch of an email summary card that appears at the top of the email. The company announced Thursday that users will no longer have to tap on the option to summarise emails using AI. Instead, AI automatically summarises content when needed, without requiring user interaction.
When Gemini was launched in Gmail’s side panel last year, one of the features allowed users to summarise long email threads.
Now, Google is making AI work in your inbox.
This update is another example of how AI is most infiltrating software and services, even though AI summaries aren’t always reliable. For example, when Apple deployed an AI summary of APP push notifications, the BBC discovered that this feature repeatedly made mistakes when summarizing news headlines. Apple has now paused AI summaries for its news app.
Google’s own AI overview features can also repeatedly make mistakes, providing poor quality and inaccurate information.
With a new email summary card, Gemini lists key points for long emails and continues to update their summary as replies arrive.
This feature does not replace the option to manually click buttons to summarize emails, Google says. This will appear as a tip on the top of the email and on the Gemini side panel in Gmail.
This feature is available only through English emails at first.
Depending on your region, the overview card can be turned on or off by default. (For example, in the EU, UK, Switzerland, and Japan, smart features are turned off, so Google Help Doc Notes.) Others can choose to enable or disable the feature from Gmail settings under “Smart Features”. Workplace administrators can also disable personalization settings for users in the Admin Console.