Select Gmail users on iOS can now chat with Google’s Gemini chatbot about their inbox directly within the app, the company announced this week. The feature, which is called Gmail Q&A, was first rolled out to Android users back in August.
Now, it’s available on iOS to Google One AI Premium subscribers or Google Workspace accounts with Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education, or Education Premium add-ons.
The feature can help you answer specific questions about your emails, such as, “How much did the company spend on the last marketing event?” You can ask Gemini to show you unread messages from a specific sender and summarize emails about a topic in your inbox. For instance, you can state things like “Catch me up on the emails about quarterly planning.”
Google says that to start, Gmail Q&A can find information from your inbox, but in the future, it will also be able to find information from your Drive.
Gmail’s traditional search bar isn’t going away, but now the Gemini button will be added next to the search bar. The idea behind the feature is to get people to use AI when trying to find specific information from their emails, rather than traditionally searching for certain emails.
It’s unlikely that Gmail Q&A will be available to free Gmail users anytime soon, considering that Google is marketing features like Gmail Q&A to convince people to sign up for its monthly subscriptions. These features are likely Google’s best chance at generating revenue through Gemini.
Like almost every other tech company, Google has added AI features to its existing products, including Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, and more.
The feature expansion comes a day after Gmail introduced revamped “summary cards” to help you better organize your inbox and do things like track packages, check-in for flights, set reminders, mark bills as paid, and more all within the email app.
By rolling out these new updates to its email service, Google is ensuring that its product remains competitive, as Apple introduced several Gmail-like features to its Mail app with iOS 18.
