Last summer, Google started rolling out Gemini in the Gmail side panel, giving users the ability to summarize email threads, see suggested responses, ask questions, and get help drafting an email using the AI chatbot. Nearly a year later, Google is back with another update, bringing the new Gemini summary cards to the Gmail mobile app.
Previously, if you wanted Gemini to summarize an individual email or an email thread, you’d tap “Summarize this email” at the top of the message, which would open Gemini. Going forward, the summaries will automatically appear at the top of any email where they could be helpful, such as lengthy messages or email threads with several replies.
“Gemini will synthesize all the key points from the email thread and any replies thereafter will also be a part of the synopsis, keeping all summaries up to date,” Google says.
For now, the Gemini summary cards are only available for emails in English. If you don’t see a summary card above the email, you can still generate one yourself by tapping the “Summarize this email” chip at the top of the screen.
As for availability, every paid Google Workspace account should receive the feature within the next 15 days, along with Google One AI Premium subscribers, and customers with the Gemini Education or Gemini Education Premium add-on.
Considering how desperate Google is to have customers interact with its AI, it’s probably only a matter of time before everyone else starts seeing these AI-generated summaries by default. If you’re confident that you don’t want Gemini summary cards to eventually start appearing above your emails, the easiest solution seems to be turning off Gmail smart features. This will lock you out of a number of other features as well, so be warned.
