This week, Google announced a new AI Inbox view for Gmail that replaces the traditional list of emails with an AI-generated list of to-dos and topics to track based on what’s in your inbox. It’s not widely available yet, but I have access, and in the few hours I’ve spent messing around with it, I can see how AI Inbox could be a helpful or even transformational way to manage your inbox. But right now, it’s not going to change the way I manage my email, and I’m not sure it ever will.
Before I dig in, I should note a few things upfront. AI Inbox is a very early product that’s currently only available to “trusted testers.” It’s unlikely that you can use this for yourself just yet, and what it’s like now may not be representative of what it will be like when it launches broadly. The feature currently only works with consumer Gmail accounts, not Workspace ones, so I’ve only been able to see how it handles my personal inbox, not with my much busier work inbox.
But as someone who already runs a very tight ship when it comes to my email, I was curious if AI Inbox could make my nearly inbox-zero system any better.
As I wrote this on Friday, there were six emails sitting in my personal inbox:
This, for me, is a high number; instead of deciding as soon as I can if I need to do something with the emails, I’ve let them sit to see how AI Inbox would handle them.
Screenshot Screenshot: Jay Peters / The Verge
But if I click the new AI Inbox icon in my sidebar above the traditional inbox one, after a few seconds of loading, my inbox looks completely different.
Screenshot: Jay Peters / The Verge
Screenshot: Jay Peters / The Verge
With AI Inbox, my inbox instead becomes an AI-generated page of short summaries to read. There are suggested to-dos at the top, with links to the emails they’re about if I want to dig in more or respond. Under the to-dos, there are topics to catch up on, also with links to the relevant emails. Perhaps most notably, AI Inbox has pulled in two things that I’ve archived and aren’t in my main inbox: conversations between my wife and me about tax preparation and potty training for our toddler.
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