It's fair to say Google hasn't been shy at attempting to stuff its Gemini AI bot into just about every app possible – and the indications are that the Gmail app for Android could be the latest to get an infusion of Gemini's artificial intelligence magic.
This comes from well-known tipster AssembleDebug and Android Authority, and it's based on an APK (Android Application Package) teardown. Essentially, it means digging through the app code to find features that haven't been enabled for the user yet.
One of those features is now a Gemini button on the toolbar at the top. Tapping it would bring up a prompt box for Gemini, so you might want to get the AI bot to summarize some of your emails, or draft a reply to a message in your inbox.
This was actually first spotted back in April, although the toolbar button wasn't visible then. It also matches some of the functionality that paying Google Workspace users can already get in Gmail, so it's not much of a surprise seeing it show up for more people.
AI summaries
Gemini AI can clearly be useful when digging through long emails and conversation threads, picking out the key points as needed – though it's important to remember that AI still isn't 100% reliable, and indeed might never be.
You're on safer ground when AI is summarizing rather than creating text, because it doesn't have to invent anything new. However, there's still no guarantee that Gemini AI wouldn't miss something vital in one of its summaries, because it misunderstands the significance of a group of words or a sentence.
If you really, really need to be accurate and on top of something in your inbox, you're still better off reading it for yourself. Humans can make mistakes too, of course, but you understand the people you're emailing with and what they're emailing about – you're not just weighing up probabilities of word combinations.
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The team at Android Authority was also able to get Gemini AI to change the tone of draft emails, and explain how to complete tasks in Gmail. As yet though, there's no word on when the feature might be going live for users.
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David Nield
Freelance Contributor
Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.
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