As part of revolutionizing how we handle our inboxes, Google has brought a new feature to its email client, which is powered by an advanced AI model called Gemini, to automatically summarize email threads in Gmail.
This latest feature drop, in what Google is calling an “integrated experience,” seeks to help users save time and work more efficiently by shortening long email chains right in the Gmail app on Android and iOS mobile devices.
With Gemini earlier, a Gmail user could manually trigger a summary of an email thread through the “Summarize this email” button. But now the process of summarization is made easy with this latest add-on.
Gemini now also automatically recognizes when the email thread is longer than usual (or has multiple responses) and auto-creates a summary card on top of the email content. This makes it possible to see the main messages and structure of a discussion at a glance, without having to read every single comment.
Google notes that these auto-created summaries are dynamic and will be kept up to date in real time as new responses to the thread are added so that users will always have the latest content overview.
This is especially useful for people who work in email exchanges, since now they can prioritize and attend to important information in a time-effective manner.
Gemini’s automatic email summarization is now offered to Google Workspace English speaking users, Google One AI Premium subscribers as well as Gemini Education and Education Premium users.
The rollout may take up to 15 days for feature visibility with Rapid Release domains getting the feature now and Scheduled Release domains getting the feature between September 12th and September 26th.
Automatic summaries are meant to be helpful, however, Google has also kept the possibility for users apply a summary to emails that aren’t automatically summarized, by using the “Summarize this email” button or Gemini sidebar. Users who don’t want this sort of automatic summary can turn it off in the Gmail smart features settings.
Adopting Gemini’s summarisation-automation into the Gmail interface represents a major achievement in applying AI to our everyday workflows and optimising our communication, serving millions of users around the world.
