Searching for a particular message in a sea of emails can be a real needle-in-haystack situation. As Gmail’s search performance hasn’t always been the best, Google is now calling upon the power of AI to better refine your results.
Google Is Adding an AI-Powered Search Feature to Gmail
Knock-knock. Who’s there? More AI. On the heels of adding anew Gemini feature to Gmail for more efficient scheduling, Google is now rolling out an AI-powered search tool for the email app. AsGoogle’s The Keywordreports, you’ll soon be able to toggle betweenMost relevantandMost recentresults, giving you more control over how you find and filter emails.
Previously, when searching for a message on Gmail, the platform would display a chronological list of emails matching your keywords. Now, thanks to AI analysis, you can also get search results that prioritize contacts you frequently interact with. Here’s how Google puts it:
Instead of just showing emails in chronological order based on keywords, Gmail search results now factor in elements like recency, most-clicked emails and frequent contacts. With this update, the emails you’re looking for are far more likely to be at the top of your search results — saving you valuable time and helping you find important information more easily.
While I don’t yet see theMost relevantsearch option in Gmail, I assume the AI tool would have deduced that I interact with emails from Chewy far more than I do with those from Whole Foods. Hence, the feature would have prioritized the email I was truly looking for closer to the top.
When to Expect Gmail’s “Most Relevant” Search Setting
If you have a personal account, you should expect to see Google’s newMost relevantsearch filter very soon, as the company is rolling the update out globally. The setting will be available on a browser or in the Gmail app, for both Android and iOS devices.
Google says it will roll out the feature to business accounts next.
More AI: Brought to You by Google
While I would consider this feature to be helpful, I’m still a bit hesitant to introduce more AI into my day-to-day life. At least, I want AI features to be optional tools that I can disable at my discretion. In this case, it appears that Gmail’s AI search tool will be optional. You will have the freedom to select the classicMost recentsearch filter, and sift through messages yourself.
That being said, I’m not sure what the default will be for Gmail. For instance, will there be an easy-to-locate button to select which search mode you’d like to use, before you carry out a search? Will the setting be hidden in the advanced search options, or will it be solely adjustable after the fact? If it’s the latter, then AI will be analyzing our mail, at least once, whether we like it or not.
I want to believe that Google will give users advanced control over this new AI feature that will analyze their emails. If we look at other companies' AI tool debuts as examples, this reality seems promising. WhenMicrosoft integrated Copilot with its Microsoft 365 apps, there was a way toopt out of MS 365’s Copilot inclusion. That said, Google isn’t always the first to respect user privacy.
