You can now talk to your Gmail inbox, as seen in Google IO 2026

Google isn’t finished bringing AI into your inbox. On Tuesday at the IO 2026 developer conference, the tech giant announced an expansion of Gmail’s “AI Inbox” functionality, which adds artificial intelligence features to conversation. This means you can ask Gmail about things in your inbox instead of typing in search terms.

The company says Gemini’s AI-powered feature, called Gmail Live, will help you quickly find information buried in your inbox.

Maybe you need information about your upcoming flight, the time of your dentist appointment, the door code for an Airbnb rental, or some details about an event at your child’s school, for example.

Previously, you would have to type keywords into the search box (or perhaps type someone’s email address or domain) to try to narrow down your search. However, this doesn’t always make emails easier to find, especially if your search term is found across multiple messages.

“Gmail Live can answer naturally worded questions, respond to follow-up questions, and pivot if you need to interrupt,” Devanshi Bhandari, Gmail product lead, explained at a press conference ahead of Google’s annual developers conference, Google I/O, where the feature was first introduced to the public.

It’s another way Google is trying to showcase how its AI technology can drive real-world improvements to products used by millions of consumers, at a time when many outside the tech industry are questioning the value of AI, as new data centers are built in their backyards, sending their energy bills up.

The ability to point out something as simple as making it easier to find something missing in your email inbox — an experience almost everyone has had at some point — could be a practical, positive use case for AI… or at least, so Google hopes.

Bhandari demonstrated Gmail Live to reporters, asking the tool a series of questions about things in their inbox, such as a child’s show-and-tell project and their class trip, as well as hotel and flight information for a trip to Detroit. Similar to using a standalone AI chatbot like Gemini or ChatGPT, Gmail users can ask these questions out loud in natural language, and the chatbot will respond.

In the demo, Gmail Live also understood the nuances between things like “field trip” and “trip” and was able to move from one topic to another, Bhandari noted. Additionally, AI can pull subtle details from emails, such as a hotel room number, or infer who you are asking about, even when their names are not explicitly mentioned.

The company noted that similar voice technology is also coming to its to-do list, Google Keep.

Notably, Gmail Live doesn’t replace traditional Gmail search — it’s just another option.

Google may have learned that not everyone is ready to try AI only after it “upgraded” Google Photos with AI-powered search to backlash. Google Photos later backed away from this feature, making the use of AI optional after numerous complaints.

Gmail is also gaining other new capabilities, including ready-to-send drafts, instant access to files, and the ability to manage tasks by marking individual tasks as done.

Additionally, the AI ​​Inbox experience, which launched earlier this year, will expand beyond Google AI Ultra subscribers to Google AI Pro and Plus subscribers as well. This allows you to see an overview of the tasks and items you want to follow up on that are buried in your inbox, all on one page.

However, voice-activated Gmail Live will roll out later this summer and will initially be limited to Google AI Ultra subscribers.

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