New feature in Gmail app, will talk with Google Gemini

Google’s AI assistant Gemini can now be spoken to through the Gmail app. With the addition of the new feature ‘Gmail Q&A’, users can now use Google’s AI-based personal assistant ‘Gemini’ through the Gmail app. But initially this facility will be available only on Android devices and you have to be a paid subscriber of Gemini.

Last Thursday (August 29), Google officially announced the new ‘Gmail Q&A’ (Gmail Question and Answer) feature through their ‘Google WordPress Updates’ blog. While only Android users have access for now, the blog post mentions that the feature will soon be accessible from Apple’s iOS devices.

What can be done with this ‘Gmail Q&A’ feature?
Google Gemini can be easily accessed using the ‘Q&A’ ​​or Question and Answer feature in the Gmail app. Gmail users can now use Gemini to create summaries of emails in their accounts and read emails and their summaries with Gemini.

In addition, tasks like finding specific e-mails and reading e-mails to provide detailed information on specific topics can now be done through the Voyage command. This will save both labor and time. As a result, the work speed will increase and more work can be done in a short time.

In general, to find something in Gmail, you have to use the search bar at the very top of the interface. Even with the new ‘Q&A’ ​​feature, Google is not removing the search bar. Only a button called ‘Gemini’ will be added next to the search bar.

Google has been trying to popularize searching through AI chat for quite a long time, moving away from the popular way of searching by typing in the search bar. And as a part of that, the ‘Gemini’ button is being added to Gmail.

Instead of searching for an email through the search bar, Gmail wants users to create a summary of the email using an AI chatbot. The AI-generated summary also mentions the source e-mail, so users can easily read the source e-mail if they want.

To use Gemini from the Gmail app, you must have a paid subscription to Gemini. Paid subscribers can access the feature by clicking on Gemini’s ‘Black Star’ logo at the top right of the app. For now, e-mail can be accessed through the ‘Gmail Q&A’ feature, but Google has announced plans to bring this feature to Google Drive in the future.

Note that last June the ‘Gmail Q&A’ feature was opened for web users. But even there only paid subscribers of Gemini or Google One AI had access. Using the AI ​​features in Google’s Gemini ecosystem costs around $20 per month (about Rs. 2,400 in Bangladeshi currency).

While the ‘Gmail Q&A’ feature is likely to be seen on iOS devices soon, it is highly unlikely that it will be rolled out to non-paid subscribers. Because the main purpose of bringing such AI-based modern features is to encourage common users to buy subscriptions.

Google is moving forward with the goal of adding Gemini to all products in their ecosystem. As a result, it will not be surprising if Gemini is seen as a paid feature in Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar and other Google products.

Google’s parent company Alphabet has already invested huge sums of money in AI technology, but the revenue is still nominal. In order to continue our own AI activities, we need to increase the income from the AI ​​sector. And only then will board members get the ‘green light’ for AI investment.

Other than trying to monetize Gemini, Google has yet to create any other way to increase revenue in the AI ​​sector.