Google Just Overhauled Gmail With Gemini 3, Turning It Into an AI Assistant

Google unveiled a sweeping overhaul of its flagship email service today, integrating its most advanced artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3, directly into Gmail.

The move marks the company’s most aggressive attempt yet to transform the inbox from a passive repository of messages into an active personal assistant, escalating its rivalry with OpenAI and Microsoft.

The updates, announced alongside new features for the Gemini app, leverage the company’s latest large language model to automate daily tasks, sort communications by priority, and generate creative visual content.

The AI-powered inbox

At the center of the update is a redesigned Gmail interface powered by Gemini 3, the next-generation model Google introduced late last year. The new “AI Inbox” view, available starting today, departs from the traditional chronological list. Instead, it uses on-device processing to organize emails into priority clusters and offers a “Catch me up” summary of recent activity, such as shipping notifications, appointment reminders, and purchase receipts.

“This is us delivering on Gmail proactively having your back,” said Blake Barnes, a Google VP of product, in a statement Thursday.

The company positioned the update as a shift toward a “thought partner” capable of answering complex queries about a user’s digital life, such as “When does my flight land?”—all without requiring manual searches.

The update also expands the “Help Me Write” tool. Previously a premium feature, the AI drafting capability is now rolling out to all users with enhanced tone-matching abilities, allowing the software to mimic a user’s personal writing style more improved accuracy.

The rollout started Thursday for users in the United States. While some features (like email thread summaries and “Help Me Write”) are free for everyone, the most powerful “Assistant” features—specifically the ability to ask questions across your inbox (e.g., “What size shoes did I order?”)—are currently restricted to paid subscribers using Google AI Pro or Ultra. The new “AI Inbox” view (which sorts mail by priority) is still limited to a group of “trusted testers,” not the general public.

Gmail holds roughly 30% of the global email client market share, typically ranking second behind Apple Mail—which has a higher share because it is the default app on iPhones, often used to access Gmail accounts. Most major industry reports and data suggest the user base has stabilized around 1.8 billion, though some recent estimates project it crossing the 2 billion mark in 2025–2026.

‘Nano Banana’ and creative tools

Beyond productivity, Google is pushing its capabilities in creative media.The announcement highlighted the integration of its efficient image-generation model, codenamed “Nano Banana” (officially Gemini 2.5 Flash Image), into the broader Gemini ecosystem.