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AI Google

AI in Gmail Will Sift Through Emails, Provide Search Summaries, Send Emails (arstechnica.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google's Gemini AI often just feels like a chatbot built into a text-input field, but you can really start to do special things when you give it access to a ton of data. Gemini in Gmail will soon be able to search through your entire backlog of emails and show a summary in a sidebar. That's simple to describe but solves a huge problem with email: even searching brings up a list of email subjects, and you have to click-through to each one just to read it.

Having an AI sift through a bunch of emails and provide a summary sounds like a huge time saver and something you can't do with any other interface. Google's one-minute demo of this feature showed a big blue Gemini button at the top right of the Gmail web app. Tapping it opens the normal chatbot sidebar you can type in. Asking for a summary of emails from a certain contact will get you a bullet-point list of what has been happening, with a list of "sources" at the bottom that will jump you right to a certain email. In the last second of the demo, the user types, "Reply saying I want to volunteer for the parent's group event," hits "enter," and then the chatbot instantly, without confirmation, sends an email.
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AI in Gmail Will Sift Through Emails, Provide Search Summaries, Send Emails More

AI in Gmail Will Sift Through Emails, Provide Search Summaries, Send Emails

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  • Also, Google promises... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2024 @04:54PM (#64472111) Homepage

    Also, Google promises never to use your personal emails to train its publicly-accessible AI, wink wink.

  • "Reply saying I want to volunteer for the parent's group event," hits "enter," and then the chatbot instantly, without confirmation, sends an email.

    I won't even let my coworkers do this for me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      i don't even want coworkers!

    • How is that faster than actually hitting "reply" and typing "I want to volunteer for the parent's group event" and then hitting "send"?

      What am I missing?

      • Heh we're gonna bloat our emails with AI generated pleasantries and filter them out with AI on the other end.

        Why can't we get ad-blockers like this first?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cstacy ( 534252 )

        How is that faster than actually hitting "reply" and typing "I want to volunteer for the parent's group event" and then hitting "send"?

        What am I missing?

        The human can barely put together enough sentences to say they want to volunteer, whereas the AI will write a very professional letter. In other words, the feature is automated lying and misrepresentation. The receiver is fooled into accepting the originator's message, based on it's quality; but it was ghostwritten by an "AI".

        • Professional letter? In my last job, one lady was always putting her emails through chatgpt (or whatever ai was fashionable), just to make sure they looked professional. They might have looked professional, but they were revolting.. Just like anything created by ai, there was always something that sounded weird and unnatural. I hope whatever service uses ai, will allow users to turn it off completely. I wouldn't trust ai to spellcheck an sms for me, let alone summarise emails or do anything critical. I hope

  • My email Summary (Score:5, Funny)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2024 @05:10PM (#64472157) Homepage
    Summary: "You have received the usual shit".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      Sub-summary: This stuff you don't need will fill the God-sized hole in your soul.

  • I feel strapped to this ugly train. Hope others provide an alternate path.

  • Nopest of nope nope! (Score:3)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2024 @05:50PM (#64472247)
    I don't see a functional difference between that and Google actually reading emails.

  • Why have a mailbox???? (Score:3)

    by BishopBerkeley ( 734647 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2024 @05:52PM (#64472255) Journal
    If your mailbox is so fucking bloated that you need AI to "clean it up", then why have that mailbox at all? Clearly, you don't give two shits about the emails therein, so why would you care if AI is going to "summarize" and "tidy up" all the dogshit you are ignoring? Every person I know with 4,000 plus emails in their inbox says the same thing: I just don't care.

    Maybe the AI simply deletes things it knows the user will not notice in order to save Google money by reducing disk space.
  • Google is amazing. Always finding or co-opting new ways to be even more creepy. Remember "Don't be Evil"? There are great alternatives to all the stuff from Big Tech. Never submit.

  • Summary (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    Deposed African government minister seeks business partner for lucrative venture. E-Mail contains numerous spelling/grammar mistakes.

    Pretty much sums up all the shit I get from GMail.

  • Hey gmail, Reply saying "I want to volunteer for the parent's group event,"

    To: Parent's Group

    From: Sharon

    I will volunteer for the parent's group event, i have a lovely bunch of coconuts in my hovercraft and the sky is blue due to Raleigh scattering. I am sorry as an AI I can't do that. Please let me know if you need more help.

    Sh[free token count exceeded, agent terminated, sending..., sent]

  • of just the one email you are reading right now!

  • Google, a company based on their search technology first has never had a good search engine in their mail or docs clients. Well, now I know why, they were waiting to have a data slurping means of powering it instead of just making the existing implementation decent. They've already got the data, no reason to suck it into yet another mess, bah, something else I'll need to figure out how to disable.

  • that I'm looking for, now that would be great.
    Gmail search options suck massively for corporate emails.

  • Hire a person who has very little skill in reading english, which could be done very inexpensively if they are outside the USA, England or Australia. Give them access to your email account and have them go through and organize it once a week. When you need something done have them do it for you.

    You will get better results, and have better personal security then relying on any AI system. And there will be real accountability if anything goes wrong. If (actually when) Google screws things up for you there wi

  • "AI in Gmail Will Sift Through Emails, Provide Search Summaries, Send Emails"
  • If the AI starts buying things for you based on what it learns about you. Of course, because this is Google, they are just as likely to cancel it.

  • I'm still getting used to Marconi using radio to extend the telephone and telegraph. Also, I hear they are now making frozen TV dinners - whatever 'TV' is.

  • Reading this I can't help thinking the singularity will actually be when AIs are reading emails/documents, and then sending other AIs emails/documents. What's the point

    At least if this is Google they'll kill it after two years when they get bored and try something else. In the meantime let's remember that a lot of AI products will be pushed by companies whose profit is coming from ad sales. They could be aiming to make life easier, or could finding new ways to spam adverts and sell personal data.

  • To whom else is it going to give a summary of your email?

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