Gmail is going to start talking to you

Google is launching a big new feature for Gmail called Gmail Live, a new AI-powered voice mode that’s basically the Gemini Live experience but built specifically for your inbox.

To use Gmail Live, tap an icon that will appear in your search bar and just start talking. In a press briefing, a Google employee showed a live demo of the feature where she asked questions about things like events at her kid’s school and an upcoming trip to Detroit. Gmail pulled up relevant details in the Gmail Live interface, like the date and location of a show-and-tell event at the school, all sourced from the employee’s inbox.

It was an intriguing demo, and you can see how Gmail Live could be useful; when searching, instead of wading through the usual intimidating list of emails while you’re searching for one specific detail, you could just ask Gmail Live to figure it out and tell you what you’re looking for. But that means the feature must be trustworthy — if it’s not accurate in a pinch, like pulling up a flight’s confirmation code in a hurry at the airport, then people probably won’t use it.

“Trust is the bedrock of how we think about Gmail in general,” Blake Barnes, VP of product for Gmail, tells The Verge. He says the company has spent a lot of time figuring out how, in every step of using Gmail Live, “you’re getting a product you can trust,” even when it’s trying to help you with complex queries. “It’s our job to take that complexity away from you in a way that you can trust and rely on us.” Gmail Live will also be able to show you the source where it’s getting its information, which lets you verify what it’s telling you.

Google is bringing voice-driven AI features to Docs and Keep, too. With Docs Live, you can talk over your ideas with Gemini and it will help structure a document and pull in details from places like your Gmail and Google Drive. In Keep, as you talk about things you might want the app to track, it can put together things like reminders and grocery lists for you. Gmail Live, Docs Live, and the voice-driven Keep features will roll out on mobile starting this summer to subscribers of Google’s AI Pro and Ultra tiers (though the Keep upgrade will roll out first just on Android).

Google is also expanding availability of Gmail’s AI Inbox, which basically turns your inbox into an email version of Google Search’s AI Mode, to subscribers of its Pro and Plus tiers. It’s already available for Ultra subscribers.