Artificial intelligence--and in particular generative AI--continues to push its way into every aspect of digital life, with varying degrees of success. One of the latest updates from Google adds the Gemini AI chatbot to Gmail on Android and iOS, which means you can ask questions about anything in your inbox. For example, you might want a summary of a discussion you've been having with your boss or need a reminder about when an upcoming camping trip is actually happening. For queries like these, Gemini can dive into your email threads and pull out the salient details for you. This is separate to the Gemini text creation tools you get when composing emails in Gmail on the web, and--for the time being at least--it's exclusive to those with a paid Google Workspace account or a subscription to the Google One AI Premium plan.

When Google rolled out Gemini side panels for Gmail and its other Workspace apps, it revealed that its generative AI chatbot will also be able to offer contextual smart replies for its email service in the future. Now, the company has officially released that feature. Smart replies have existed in Gmail since 2017, giving you a quick, albeit impersonal, way to respond to messages, even if you're in a hurry or on the go. These machine-generated responses are pretty limited, though, and they're often just one liners to tell the recipient that you understand what they're saying or that you agree with whatever they're suggesting. The new Gemini-generated smart replies take the full content of the email thread into consideration.

Google is adding Gemini-powered AI automation to more tasks in Workspace. In its Tuesday Google I/O keynote, the company said its advanced Gemini 1.5 Pro will soon be available in the Workspace side panel as "the connective tissue across multiple applications with AI-powered workflows," as AI grows more intelligent, learns more about you and automates more of your workflow. Gemini's job in Workspace is to save you the time and effort of digging through files, emails and other data from multiple apps. "Workspace in the Gemini era will continue to unlock new ways of getting things done," Google Workspace VP Aparna Pappu said at the event. The refreshed Workspace side panel, coming first to Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drive, will let you chat with Gemini about your content.

Google is beginning the rollout process for its recently announced "high-priority" notifications feature in its Gmail mobile app. The new AI-powered smarts will be landing first in the Gmail iOS app, followed shortly by the Android incarnation. As part of the broader Gmail redesign news several months back, Google revealed that a number of new features would soon be coming to the Gmail mobile app. Among those were high-priority notifications, which were made available in the company's other email app, Inbox, last year. The feature is basically trying to fix the perennial problem of alert overload.

For many people, Gmail is the way to access your emails online. Now, the service's web client is getting a massive overhaul, bringing a host of new security features and UI improvements. We breakdown what's new with the 2018 Gmail update. Update (May 8 2018): At Google I/O 2018, the search giant announced another new Gmail feature that will be rolled into the email service. Soon you'll be able to autocomplete an email in the same way that you're able to using your phone's keyboard on a desktop. The feature, called Smart Compose, is powered by artificial intelligence, and will suggest complete sentences while you type.

The past few years have seen an influx of apps that allow users to privately send money to their friends. On Tuesday, Google released an update that allowed one of its flagship mobile apps to join the fun, according to TechCrunch. As part of a software update that went live ahead of Tuesday's Google I/O event, the Gmail app for iOS now allows users to send or request money from other people when drafting an email. Gmail for iOS gets Google Pay and snooze features https://t.co/M743XF7yQT According to TechCrunch, the process is quite simple.

Google's "instant reply" technology, that can already be found in Inbox and Allo, is coming to the Gmail app for iOS and Android. If you've never used instant reply before, Google uses its machine learning smarts to analyze the contents of your messages to suggest quick replies. You then just tap and insert your chosen reply into a new email, hit send and call it a day. We've found that smart replies can often feel impersonal, or they just don't quite fit the message you want to send. But Google says that 12 percent of all Inbox replies use smart replies, so clearly people like them. They are pretty effective for quick confirmation or "thank you" replies, so it's definitely not without utility.