You know that Gmail has been with us since its beta days, «Google’s latest» (2004, and invitations were still circulating like trading cards). You know that email has always been a battleground. We have labels, filters, tabs… and that collective fantasy called Inbox Zero . Two decades later, Google seems to have decided that the problem is no longer «having too many emails ,» but rather turning email into a control panel with tasks and context , even if that sometimes feels dangerously like living inside an endless to-do list.
Artificial intelligence can be very useful; however, we’ve seen many useless applications, or ones that don’t go beyond being a meme. Now, it can be used as a to-do list for our email, and that could be a very interesting use.
Gmail would have an AI for our inbox
Google is testing a new view in Gmail called AI Inbox that breaks with the traditional «date-based email list» format and replaces it with two sections: suggested tasks and topics you should catch up on . In the demo, the system suggests mundane things like rescheduling a dentist appointment, responding to a coach, or paying a fee before the deadline.
For now, the rollout is limited: trusted testers in the US, browser-based, and only for consumer Gmail accounts (no Workspace… for now). It’s something Microsoft has been talking about for a while, but we haven’t seen anything yet.
Right now, there’s no way to mark a task as completed from that view, something Google acknowledges they’re «working on.» And watch out for the other bombshell: there’s no clear limit on the number of to-dos it can generate, so the risk of going from an «overflowing inbox» to «gamified anxiety» is real. In other words, it’s a good idea, but a poor implementation, for now.
“AI Overviews” in Gmail: the cousin of Search’s summary arrives in email
At the same time, Google is also pushing AI Overviews in Gmail: automatic summaries of long threads (the typical email with 27 replies and two passive-aggressive arguments). The company itself is selling it as the equivalent of Google Search’s AI Overviews: less «searching for keywords» and more «give me the answer now . «
As we have already indicated, AI is here to stay, but the important thing is to find useful functionalities for AI so as not to fall into mediocre uses or those that end up being eliminated due to lack of daily use.
