Youve probably already mastered the basic features of Gmail, such as setting up contacts and sending emails. However, Gmail has many other useful functions that you may not know about...
Today, Google announced that several features from Gmail's premium AI suite will be available for free to all personal accounts. These features aim to simplify and speed up interactions in your inbox, allowing you to dedicate your time to more productive tasks.
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Help Me Write
Let Gmail write emails for you.
The Help Me Write feature lets you create email drafts with a simple prompt. Just click the pencil icon with a star next to it and enter your prompt in the text box. The tool will compose the email and then provide options for you to fine-tune the tone and length of the draft.
Suggested Replies
Answer in style.
As the name suggests, this tool provides suggested replies to emails. It attempts to write a reply in your tone and writing style, based on the content of the email thread you're replying to. You can then refine the output before sending. Essentially, it's a more advanced version of Smart Reply, a feature that's been around for a while.
AI Overviews
Never have to dig through old email threads again.
AI Overviews is a combination of several tools. This currently free tool provides a summary of the conversation right at the beginning of the email thread. If you open a long email thread, it will review and select the key points and display them as bullet points at the top. This is really handy, especially for emails you've saved in your inbox for a while but can't remember why. Combine it with Gmail shortcuts to clean up your inbox even faster.
There's a second AI Overview feature coming soon for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. This feature lets you use the search bar at the top of your inbox to ask questions, just like searching on Google. Gmail will then review your emails and provide a summary of the answers. Google's example is a query asking for the name of a plumber who provided a quote. This sounds very useful, but unfortunately, you'll have to pay for one of the premium AI packages to use it.
AI Inbox is coming soon!
Fortunately, this feature will be optional.
Finally, Google discussed an upcoming Gmail feature called AI Inbox, which is said to "help filter out unnecessary things so you can focus on what matters most." This feature will prioritize your emails, identifying important people and urgent messages. The company claims all of this happens securely.
AI Inbox sounds quite similar to the beloved old Google Inbox app from about a decade ago, although this time it will be integrated directly into the Gmail app. The company says the feature is entirely optional, so you can turn it off if you're uncomfortable (although your inbox could still be vulnerable to data leaks). The feature will undergo limited testing before a wider release "in the coming months".
The "Help Me Write," "Suggested Replies," and "AI Overview" features will be available to Gmail accounts starting today. These are in addition to other useful new features such as the ability to manage subscriptions directly within Gmail.
See more:
- How to recover your Gmail password, Google login password
- How to set up an SMTP server to send emails from your Gmail account.
- How to check Gmail login activity
- How do I delete all emails from a specific sender on Gmail?
- 5 Gmail apps and extensions you should try today.