Gmail’s new AI summaries now pop up automatically on mobile

We’ve all been there: you open your Gmail on your phone, tap into an email thread, and are immediately met with a wall of replies. Getting the gist of those long conversations can be a real time-sink. While Gmail’s AI-powered summaries have been around for Workspace users since last year, you’ve had to manually ask for them. Google is now making that process a bit more proactive as Gmail will start creating these AI summaries automatically for some threads, and they’ll appear right above the emails themselves.

According to the Google Workspace Updates Blog, the AI in Gmail will now decide for itself when a summary could be helpful. This will happen for “longer email threads or messages with several replies”. So, instead of you needing to click a button to get that quick overview, Gemini will just serve it up if it thinks the thread warrants it. Even better, these automatic summaries will be kept up-to-date as new replies roll in, keeping you in the loop without extra effort.

This shift from manual to automatic aims to save you a click and get you the key information even faster, which is always a welcome change when trying to manage a busy inbox. But before you get too excited, there are a few key things to note about this automatic summary feature:

• It’s for Google Workspace users. There’s no word yet if or when this might come to personal Gmail accounts.
• The automatic summaries will initially appear above English-language emails only.
• This is a mobile-only feature for now. Google hasn’t announced plans for bringing automatic summaries to Gmail on desktop.
• The rollout may take up to two weeks to show up for your account.

I actually had this pop up for me today in a very helpful way, but if Gmail doesn’t automatically generate a summary for a particular thread for you, you’ll still have the option to manually ask it to create one, just like before. And if you’re not a fan of these AI interventions at all, you can deactivate all of Gmail’s AI features, including automatic summaries, by turning off “Smart features” in the app’s settings.

This seems like a smart, subtle way for Google to make its AI more proactively helpful within Gmail for its Workspace customers. While the current limitations (mobile-only, Workspace-only, English-only) mean not everyone will see this immediately, it’s a good step towards making email a bit less overwhelming. We’ll be keeping an eye out to see if and when this useful feature expands further.