Billions Of Gmail Users Have A Decision To Make With Google's Gemini AI Overhaul

Google's drive to infuse AI across its portfolio of existing products has seen steady Gemini integration in many areas, and now Gmail is getting the biggest Gemini overhaul yet. Gmail will now include a dedicated AI Inbox, which is meant to isolate the most important emails from across your various categories to rise to the top. Another new feature is AI Overviews, which provides AI overviews for long email chains or for questions you ask the AI inbox yourself. Additionally, the AI-driven "Help Me Write" is now available for everyone to use, and Smart Replies have been updated to more context-sensitive Suggested Replies. Help Me Write is also set to receive an update integrating context from other Google apps

Finally, there's also an AI Proofread feature, but this is only available for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. Hey, Gmail's still 99% free, right? A paid AI feature or extra storage isn't unreasonable for Google to ask a fee for here in 2026.


Fortunately for users who want to keep AI out of their inbox, Google stated on X/Twitter that you can opt out of these features and in a statement to Huff Post that your emails aren't being used to train Gemini. Even before Gemini was involved, Smart Categories still used keyword detection in your inbox to sort emails into appropriate folders ("Promotions", etc), and even that can be opted out of if you please. Additionally, the full-blown AI Inbox feature is still in limited rollout for now, with only AI Overviews, Help Me Write, and Suggested Replies being rolled out universally at time of writing.

So long as Google's commitment to user choice and privacy is more than just surface-level, these do seem like rather useful enhancements to the Gmail suite of features, rather than more unwelcome AI bloat. For the true anti-AI purists, it's very good that these features can be completely disabled, though it is definitely becoming harder and harder to avoid using AI in many tech spaces, to the point that its corporate domination of CES 2026 this year was the subject of much backlash.