According to Google, the new AI features now available in Gmail are based on Google’s Gemini 3 AI model a blog post by Blake Barnes, VP of product for Gmail at Google. For Gmail users, these new tools take the AI-powered email experience beyond Smart Replies and largely invisible spam detection.
If you’re an email marketer trying to deliver messages to the three billion Gmail users around the world, more AI in Gmail will probably worry you. That’s understandable. We’ve all seen how AI has turned the work of colleagues in SEO upside down. One of the new features for Gmail is essentially AI overviews for email.
Another feature, AI Inbox, summarizes messages and helps users prioritize tasks and requests. Barnes described it as a personal briefing for Gmail users. In practice, it helps people get the information they need without having to read all their emails.
Take a deep breath. I’m not naive enough to say “this too shall pass,” because it won’t. However, we will adapt to AI in the inbox just as we must adapt to everything else.
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Four reasons why email marketers shouldn’t panic about more AI in Gmail
1. It’s a noisy world
Be honest: how effective are you at managing your inbox? We live in a noisy world, and it seems to get noisier every day. Gmail already offers features to help users manage their email subscriptions as part of the fight against the noise.
That flood of messages means some Gmail users on your email list don’t really want to be there; they’re just too overwhelmed to opt out. For them you are contributing to the noise.
2. Intention knocks, opens and reads
There is another group of users who want to be on your list but are overwhelmed. They’re probably having trouble finding your emails, or don’t need them at the moment. Yet they have not opted out.
Imagine a Gmail user who is looking for a new pair of jeans and asks in his inbox if he has received any jeans promotions in the last two weeks. That’s where AI discovers a promotional email that the user didn’t know they had. That’s the intention.
3. Brand matters
In response to the changes AI was bringing to web traffic, marketers turned to branding. In a LinkedIn post, MarTech contributor Jaina Mistry highlighted brand recall as a key strategy in an AI-influenced inbox.
4. This is not entirely new
As Valimail’s Al Iverson noted on his Spam Resource Center BlogAI in the inbox can actually help good email senders. The AI will prioritize content that users want to see. But he also pointed out that not everyone will use the new features.
One reason? Many people are already using AI to manage email. For example, ChatGPT users can connect their inbox to the LLM to search and summarize.
Yes, integrating these features directly into Gmail extends access to early adopters. But tools to manage the clutter in your inbox aren’t entirely new. See point #1 above.
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