Gmail's New AI Wants to Help With All Those Unread Emails --- Applying Google's Gemini to a messy inbox makes the onerous task easier, but it's no magic fix

“My email inbox is starting to resemble the mailbox at my front door: stuffed full with junk mail and promos, with an important note tucked in here and there.

 

Google recently started rolling out new features to help with the deluge, including the new AI Inbox. It's like a briefing of your most important messages. Or, at least, what AI thinks are your most important messages.

 

For those of us sinking in email quicksand, a curated list instead of a wall of new messages is compelling. I'd love for AI to handle my laborious daily email management. Could AI be trusted, though, to figure out what really matters?

 

For the past week, I've been testing AI Inbox, along with the new Gemini-powered ghostwriter and editor coming soon to your Gmail account. The future of email is unfortunately still email. But AI does help us make shorter work of it.

 

The ghostwriter

 

Last week, Google began rolling out a new sparkly pencil button, called Help Me Write, to standard Gmail accounts in the U.S.

 

In a reply to an online order confirmation, I clicked the button and wrote the prompt "Ask for a refund." The AI generated a few paragraphs, and even included my order number, using the original email as context.

 

Another feature, called Suggested Replies, can even mimic your voice. In a group thread about digging through digital archives, one friend asked if we found any fun blasts from the past. Gemini suggested this reply:

 

Hey, No fun at all just deleting old stuff lol.

 

It did look like something I'd write to someone I'm close to, complete with a lack of punctuation and a self-deprecating LOL. In a follow-up, the AI made sure to use at least one exclamation point. (Another Nicole-ism!)

 

I was fine letting Gemini ghostwrite emails about insurance claims and refunds, but it didn't feel right for messages to loved ones, even if the initial draft did sound like me. Plus, for people who know you really well, the writing assistance might look suspicious. When a friend's husband asked if she had AI help with an uncharacteristically formal email, Gemini suggested this reply:

 

No, I wrote it myself.

 

There's an AI helper for your human writing, too, rolling out to subscribers of $20-a-month Google AI Pro plans. The Proofread tool kicks in a few seconds after you finish each sentence, with pop-up suggestions to tighten phrasing, simplify language and correct spelling. It knows when you mistake "whether" for "weather."

 

I typed:

 

Oh also, I forgot to mention that we'd appreciate it if you could park on the street this time.

 

It suggested:

 

Also, please park on the street!

 

I didn't always accept the suggestions, but if this comes to my work email, I'd probably use it daily. I write a lot of work emails.

 

Warning: You can turn off AI writing help, but you have to turn off all Gmail "smart features," even the super useful tool that automatically adds events to Google Calendar.

 

The assistant

 

While editing helps with emails I do send, a bigger challenge remains: the 16,685 unread messages in my inbox. I typically scan my inbox for anything critical, then take action right away or add read-it-laters to an ever-growing Google Tasks list. I ignore everything else.

 

With AI Inbox, Gmail not only prioritizes emails for you, it also extracts action items and compiles them into a skimmable report. There are two main categories: to-do's and topics to follow.

 

One generated list of "suggested to-do's" included a DMV renewal, time-sensitive dental forms and a subscription trial that was about to charge my card.

 

AI Inbox prioritizes messages using signals such as people you email frequently and relationships it can infer from the message content. The to-do's and topics refresh regularly, depending on how much mail you get. It isn't meant to replace your inbox stream. It's like a CliffsNotes for recent emails, and it lives in a separate section above your regular inbox.

 

So your nightmare of an inbox isn't going to suddenly become nice. A few years ago, Gmail gave us a way to sort incoming messages somewhat automatically into categories. Some people swear by this, but it takes a lot of tending. My Primary tab is still a junk drawer of receipts, login access codes and delivery updates. I have to actively hunt down the important stuff.

 

AI Inbox did alert me to an ending free trial that I completely missed. And I liked that it kept important stuff at the top, like those dental forms I still haven't completed. But it isn't perfect. One suggested to-do was a temporary activation code -- not a to-do at all. In another case, when a friend asked for feedback on a piece of writing, the tool called it a topic to follow when it was clearly an urgent to-do.

 

Superhuman, Fyxer AI and SaneBox are all AI-native email apps with similar capabilities. But they're pricey at around $20 a month. For now, Google is restricting AI Inbox to "trusted testers" before making it more broadly available in coming months. My hope is that the tool will eventually trickle to the rest of Gmail's three billion users.

 

In Google Labs, there's another tool you can try: CC is an AI-powered productivity agent that emails you a daily briefing based on what's in your Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive. If you have a basic Gmail account, you can join the wait list.

 

Personal Intelligence, for $20-a-month Google AI Pro subscribers, lives in the Gemini app. When I asked, "Where did I eat with my brother in New York last year?" Gemini couldn't find reservation info in my Gmail, so it drew from an even wider net of my Google apps, including Photos. It found a selfie of us -- in the restaurant.

 

Email isn't going away. But if AI can turn a 16,000-email disaster area into simple bulleted lists, I might finally make peace with my thousands of unreads.” [1]

 

1. Gmail's New AI Wants to Help With All Those Unread Emails --- Applying Google's Gemini to a messy inbox makes the onerous task easier, but it's no magic fix. Nguyen, Nicole.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 21 Jan 2026: A12.