Google rephrases Gmail and turns it into an AI assistant

Source: PortaldoBitcoin Original Title: Google Reimagines Gmail and Turns It into an AI Assistant Original Link: Google revealed on Thursday (8) a comprehensive overhaul of its main email service, integrating its most advanced AI model, Gemini 3, directly into Gmail.

The initiative marks the company’s boldest attempt so far to transform the inbox from a passive message repository into an active personal assistant, intensifying the rivalry with OpenAI and Microsoft.

The updates, announced alongside new features for the Gemini app, leverage Google’s latest language model to automate daily tasks, organize communications by priority, and generate creative visual content.

AI-Powered Inbox

At the heart of the update is a redesigned Gmail interface, powered by Gemini 3, the next-generation model introduced by Google at the end of last year. The new “AI Inbox” view, available starting today, breaks away from the traditional chronological list. Instead, it uses local processing to organize emails into priority groups and offers an “Update Me” summary of recent activities, such as send notifications, appointment reminders, and purchase receipts.

“This is Google fulfilling the promise of Gmail being proactively by your side,” said Blake Barnes, Google’s Vice President of Product, in a statement this Thursday.

The company positioned the update as a shift toward a “thought partner” capable of answering complex questions about the user’s digital life, such as “When does my flight arrive?” — all without manual searches.

The rollout began Thursday for users in the United States. While some features like conversation summaries and “Help Me Write” are free for everyone, the more powerful “Assistant” functions — specifically the ability to ask questions across the entire inbox ( for example, “What size shoe did I order?”) — are currently restricted to paid Google AI Pro or Ultra subscribers. The new “AI Inbox” view ( which organizes emails by priority ) is still limited to a group of “trusted testers” and has not been released to the general public.

Gmail holds about 30% of the global email client market share, usually trailing only Apple Mail — which has a larger share as the default app on iPhone, often used to access Gmail accounts. Most major industry reports and market data suggest that the user base has stabilized around 1.8 billion, although some recent estimates project it will surpass 2 billion between 2025 and 2026.

‘Nano Banana’ and Creative Tools

Beyond productivity, Google is pushing its capabilities in creative media. The announcement highlighted the integration of its efficient image generation model, codenamed “Nano Banana” ( officially Gemini 2.5 Flash Image ), into the broader Gemini ecosystem.

Originally introduced at the end of 2025, the model was designed for high-speed creation and editing of images directly on the device. Google confirmed this Thursday that the “Pro” variant of the model is now available for enterprise clients and is powering new creative tools across Google Workspace and the Gemini mobile app, allowing users to generate or remix images via natural language commands.

Privacy and Market Competition

The rollout occurs amid intensifying competition faced by Google. The launch of Gemini 3 and its integration into essential products like Gmail and Search prompted competitors like OpenAI to accelerate their own product release schedules.

However, the deep integration of AI into personal email raises ongoing privacy concerns. Google emphasized this Thursday that while Gemini 3 processes inbox data to provide summaries and responses, this information remains within a secure “engineering privacy” barrier. The company explicitly stated that user content in these personal environments is not used to train its public AI models.

To further address privacy concerns, Google also highlighted the expansion of the “Temporary Chat” feature in the Gemini app. Functioning similarly to “Incognito mode,” this feature allows users to have ad-hoc conversations with AI that are not saved in history or used for model training — a solution aimed at those worried about their data leaving traces.