Gmail's New AI Email Summaries: Love It or Leave It? Technology

[John Steed]

Just been reading about Gmail and their new AI feature that's rolling out. Google is integrating its Gemini AI to automatically summarise emails for those of us who pay for Google Workspace. It's kind of interesting.

What's Happening?

• When you open a long email or a thread, you might see an AI-generated summary right at the top. Pretty neat, right?
• Google claims it won't show up on every single email, just the ones that are lengthy or have tons of replies. But I can totally see it getting annoying if it shows up all the time.

The Details:

• The feature is currently only on mobile (both iOS and Android) and is rolling out in English first.
• If the AI thinks a summary would help, it'll pop up, and you can still manually trigger it if needed.

But Here's the Catch:
If you don't want these automatic summaries, the only way to turn them off is to disable Gemini entirely. That means losing access to all the cool features like suggested replies and Google Calendar integration. Not ideal if you ask me!

How to Turn Off Summaries:
1. Open Gmail and go to Settings.
2. Click on "See all settings."
3. Scroll to "Workspace smart features."
4. Manage those settings and toggle off "Smart features in Google Workspace."

Overall, I think these AI summaries could be useful, but I just wish there were a toggle to keep the features I like without the summaries. What do you all think?