Google unveils the future of Gmail with AI integration

Google hosted its annual I/O conference this week, a big meet-up with developers where it spills the beans on all the major software updates it's working on - and releases a whole bunch of them for the first time.

This year, unsurprisingly, it was all about artificial intelligence (AI) as Google demonstrated just how thoroughly it plans to integrate AI into its many, many programs as time goes on.

This means some of the apps you're used to are going to change, and Gmail is one of the major candidates.

Google showed off what it calls the Side Panel Assistant, a new AI panel that can pop up on the right-hand side of your Gmail tab, a dialogue box that you can basically use however you like.

You can type in requests, whether that's asking for a summary of a long thread you don't have time to read, or a quick draft of an important message you need to send.

GLENN CHAPMAN / Contributor / Getty

The system hooks into Google's chatbot, Gemini, and means that you can also ask questions like requesting a summary of the shipping status of anything you've bought recently, and more.

It looks like this could pretty much change how many people use their email inbox, even if it's arguably just building in tools you can get from other sources like ChatGPT if you want.

It's not just Gmail, though - Google's core business of Search is changing in a massive way. It's been teasing for a couple of years now the advent of 'AI Overviews' in search results that can answer questions without you ever needing to visit a webpage.

Now, those summaries are rolling out to everyone in the US in Google Search - and right now there's no way to actually opt out.

So, when you search certain terms (and there's no definitive list), you'll start to see these summaries at the top of the results page, as Google's AI model tries to aggregate an answer for you from web sources.

SOPA Images / Contributor / Getty

This is causing real consternation in some circles already - website owners are concerned that this will result in fewer people actually clicking through to read their pages, for one, although Google claims that AI summaries result in more through traffic.

In fact, there are now so many additions to Google Search that Google has at least made one small change, for those who want a purer experience. You can now find a new drop-down button when searching, under the 'More' button on a results page - the 'Web' option.

This will remove all the new cards and suggestions that Google has added over the years, returning you to a simple web search without any frills, and some are already saying that it might be the best way to get clean results.