The world’s largest email service just initiated step one in a larger plan to secure Google as your favorite AI platform.

The aim is to transform Gmail from a traditional inbox into what Google describes as a “personal, proactive inbox assistant.”

Gmail's new feature will soon organize important emails into to-dos and topics, so you don't miss anything important.

AI Overviews first appeared in Gmail last year to summarize email chains, and now it’s expanding to Gmail search. This is closer to the AI Overview experience to which you are accustomed in Google’s web search. You can enter a natural language search, and the robot churns through your messages to generate a response.

A task has a due date and a sense of progression. It can be marked complete; an email cannot. By turning emails into tasks, you don't just reorganize your inbox; you also convert your intent into an actionable structure. The approach also scales well. Be it a handful of emails a day or a hundred, the process remains the same.

Google is turning Gmail into something closer to a personal briefing room than a traditional inbox, using generative AI to read and summarize your messages for you. The new AI Inbox promises to surface what matters,