We hope you like more AI in your Gmail inbox, because Google is "bringing Gmail into the Gemini era." It'll be on by default, but the good news is that you can disable it. 

The threat, issued on Thursday by Google's VP of product Blake Barnes, sees the company expanding the reach of a trio of inbox AI features that were previously only available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. You know - the folks who actually wanted the stuff. 

Now, Barnes explained, everyone will be getting a dose of Google's much-derided AI Overviews in their Gmail inbox, along with Help Me Write features and new Suggested Reply features that are supposed to be more contextual, based on a user's writing style, and helpful.

"Just like they do in Google Search, AI Overviews turn information into answers without the digging," Barnes said. "When you open an email with dozens of replies, Gmail synthesizes the entire conversation into a concise summary of key points."

Google is also rolling out natural language inbox search, which could be the most helpful of the new features. Unfortunately for the many non-paying plebeians using Gmail for free, that feature is only available for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers - hey, gotta give them something if those previously paid AI features are being rolled out to everyone.

As for composition help, "everyone can use Help Me Write to polish emails or draft them from scratch," Barnes said. Smart Replies - the prior trio of AI-generated responses to emails - are also being updated with Suggested Replies, "which use the context of your conversation to offer relevant, one-click responses that match how you write." 

AI proofreading, which we assume will be more helpful than the current squiggly underlining of incorrectly spelled words and poor grammar, is also being rolled out on Thursday, but just to Pro and Ultra subscribers, Google explained. 

Barnes also threatened Gmail users with a full-on "AI Inbox" view that is only being rolled out to select testers for now, but will be more broadly available in the coming months. That view, as demonstrated in a video published by Google on Thursday, turns the standard Gmail inbox into a list of daily to-dos designed to help users prioritize their inbox workload "based on signals like people you email frequently, those in your contacts list and relationships it can infer from message content." 

I want to get off Mr. Barnes' wild ride

Gmail users in the US with English set as their primary language are the first ones to be subjected to these new features, which a Google spokesperson told us should be gradually rolling out to users in the next few days. 

For those worried about the privacy of their Gmail content, Google claimed in an email that it's not going to use personal message text to train its foundational models and does all AI processing in an isolated environment. 

"When Gmail connects the dots between your emails to answer a question, it does that work in a private space dedicated solely to your task," the spokesperson explained. "The data is processed to give you an answer, and it never leaves that secure boundary."

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Of course, this assumes the answers you get from Gemini in Gmail will be accurate, and that's far from a guarantee. Take, for example, a recent Google job posting for an AI answers quality engineer. While the job posting will see a new Google employee "help the AI Answers Quality team deliver AI Overviews to users' hard and complicated queries on the [search results page] and in AI Mode," where there's AI smoke, there may be AI fire, and it's entirely possible the version of Gemini that's stuffed into people's email inboxes could make mistakes, too.

For those who'd prefer to skip the Gemini-ification of their email, Google also told us that the features can all be disabled, though that comes with a slight catch: Disabling AI in Gmail requires disabling Gmail smart features entirely, which means no more inbox tabs or messages sorted by type. 

To disable Smart Features, just navigate to Settings -> General and scroll down until you see the "Smart features" header. Uncheck the "Turn on smart features" box and you should be good to go.

To avoid dealing with future forced AI insertion into your email business, it's also not a bad idea to check out a standalone email application like Thunderbird, or the built-in email client in your operating system, all of which support Gmail and don't require dealing with an ever-changing web interface to access your messages. ®