Supplier, accountsRevised quote for the shop fit-out, please confirm by Thursday
Site managerFit-out: tiles arrive Monday, electrician moved to Wednesdayand two replies
CustomerCould we push our delivery back a week?
AccountantQuarter close: the receipts we are still missingAttachment not read
Left out by AI Inbox
Promotions tab
Social tab
Muted threads
Archived, deleted or snoozed
Encrypted emails
Suggested to-dos
Confirm the revised quote before Thursday
From the supplier’s accounts teamViewReplyMark done
Reply to the customer about moving the delivery
From the customerViewReplyMark done
Topics to catch up on
Shop fit-out
The tiles arrive on Monday and the electrician has moved to Wednesday, across three emails from the site manager.
Illustration with a fictional business, built from what Google’s help page describes. It is not Google’s interface.
On 15 October 2026 Google began opening AI Inbox, the view in Gmail that lists what your emails ask you to do and summarises the subjects running across them, to paid Google Workspace accounts. The same day it brought Gmail Live, which answers spoken questions about your inbox, to Workspace accounts on mobile. Both are available only in the United States, in US English. This page sets out what AI Inbox reads, who gets each feature and when, and who in a business decides that it is on, from Google’s announcements and help pages.
By The AI Adoption · Published on 18 October 2026 · Sources: Google, 15 October 2026
What Google announced
Google first showed AI Inbox in January 2026, to a group of trusted testers on personal Gmail accounts. It described the feature as a briefing that brings the important messages to the top, using signals from your email to work out who matters to you: the people you write to often, the people in your contacts and the relationships it can infer from the messages themselves.
On 15 October Google extended AI Inbox to paid Google Workspace accounts, the business plans of Gmail and Google’s other apps. It has two parts. Suggested to-dos picks out the action items, deliverables and deadlines written inside email conversations and lists them with the action in bold. Topics to catch up on summarises the important subjects running across several threads, with the latest decisions and changes of status.
Each item links back to the email it came from, so you can open the message, reply from it or mark the to-do as done. The same day, Google brought Gmail Live, a voice conversation about your inbox, to Workspace accounts on Android and iPhone, which the section on Gmail Live below covers.
What AI Inbox reads, and what it leaves out
According to Google’s help page, AI Inbox only looks at the messages in the Primary tab of Gmail. It leaves out the Social and Promotions tabs, spam, and anything you have archived, deleted, muted or snoozed, and it does not read attachments, encrypted emails or inboxes delegated to someone else. A supplier’s quote sent as a PDF reaches AI Inbox only through what the email itself says about it.
To work, AI Inbox needs Gmail’s smart features turned on, both for Google Workspace and for Google’s other products, and Google warns that the first to-dos can take up to 7 days to appear after that. The help page also says the items are generated from the content and activity of your Workspace apps, that some are generated without being shown, and that the full list sits under View all at the bottom of AI Inbox. Marking everything as read in AI Inbox also marks the emails as read in Gmail.
Who gets it, and when
Google lists AI Inbox for the Business Starter, Standard and Plus editions, the Enterprise Starter, Standard and Plus editions, Frontline Plus and AI Pro for Education. The same post adds a note that the Starter and Education editions will get it later, in the coming months, without saying how that note fits with the list. For every edition, the feature is only available to users in the United States whose language is set to US English.
A Workspace account receives new features on one of two tracks, chosen by its administrator: on Rapid Release, users are among the first to see them; on Scheduled Release, features arrive at least one week later. For AI Inbox, the rollout began on Rapid Release accounts on 12 October and begins on Scheduled Release accounts on 26 October, and Google allows up to 15 days for the feature to become visible on each track. Gmail Live began on both tracks on 15 October.
The rollout, day by day
Each bar runs up to 15 days: the time Google allows for the feature to appear
12 Oct19 Oct26 Oct2 Nov9 Nov
AI InboxRapid Release, from 12 October
Gmail LiveBoth tracks, from 15 October
AI InboxScheduled Release, from 26 October
United StatesRolling out, for users whose language is US English
United Kingdom, Australia, New ZealandNo date given by Google
Business Starter, Standard and Plus
Enterprise Starter, Standard and Plus
Frontline Plus
AI Pro for Education
Starter and Education editions later, in Google’s note
Our drawing of Google’s rollout dates for AI Inbox and Gmail Live, from the announcements of 15 October 2026.
For a business in the UK, Australia or New Zealand, neither feature is there yet. When it announced AI Inbox in January, Google said more languages and regions would follow in the coming months; the posts of 15 October give no date for them.
Who decides it is on
On AI Inbox, Google’s post says there is no admin control for this feature: the administrator of a Workspace account cannot switch it on or off for the company. What decides whether it runs is each person’s own settings: AI Inbox needs Gmail’s smart features turned on, and anyone can show or hide it in Gmail’s settings, under Inbox.
Gmail Live is set at company level: it is on by default for organisations that have Gemini in Workspace, and it follows the smart features and personalisation settings the administrator has already chosen. Google’s help page adds that on a work account it depends on access to Gemini’s beta features, which the administrator controls.
For an owner, the practical consequence is that a feature reading the company’s email can appear in a person’s inbox without a decision at company level. Knowing which features read which mailboxes, and who in the team has them on, is part of the same work as deciding what AI is allowed to read and send, which we cover in adopting AI securely.
Gmail Live
Gmail Live is a spoken conversation with Gemini about your inbox, in the Gmail app for Android and iPhone. You ask a question aloud, it answers aloud from your emails, and at every turn it shows a card with the email the information came from, so the answer can be checked against the message. You can also choose the voice it answers with.
Google’s examples, in short
The status of an order with a supplier
When your next mandatory training is due
The latest update from your manager
The gate your flight leaves from tomorrow
When is my next mandatory training due?
The answer, read aloud from your emails
SourceThe email the answer came from
Open the email
Our drawing of one turn, from Google’s description of Gmail Live. It is not Google’s interface.
Google’s help page says Gmail Live saves a transcript of each conversation in your Gemini in Workspace history, which you can review and delete from a web browser. Like AI Inbox, it is a beta feature, covered by the Google Cloud Terms of Service.
What Google says about the data
Google’s help page on Gemini in Gmail and the other Workspace apps says that the content of a Workspace account stays in Workspace by default: it is not used to train or improve the models behind Gemini outside Workspace without permission. Gemini in Gmail uses that content to answer and does not use it to train Gemini or other generative AI models, and the content is not used for advertising.
Those are the commitments Google states for the features on this page. The pages do not say where the to-dos and summaries are processed, which matters to a business with rules about where its data may go. Our guide on what you can safely share with AI lists the questions to ask about training, retention and location.
What the announcement does not cover
The posts do not say when AI Inbox and Gmail Live will reach other countries or other languages, or why Business Starter appears in the list of editions while the note says the Starter editions will come later. They do not say where the to-dos and summaries are processed or how long they are kept.
AI Inbox works from what is written in the emails of the Primary tab. Anything that sits in an attachment, or was agreed by phone or in a meeting, stays outside it, which is why a reply to a customer still needs the context of the file it concerns, as we show in preparing a customer reply with AI.
How we start
We set up the AI environment a team already uses for the businesses we work with, with the connections each person needs, access that reflects each role and clear points where a person approves. A feature like AI Inbox changes what the inbox shows you; what an assistant is allowed to read, change and send is still set by the access and the approvals around it. If you want to talk through what that means for your business, the first step with us is a free AI pre-audit: 45 minutes on a call about how you and your team use AI today and which work to hand over first. You leave with a clear next step, with or without us.
Every fact on this page comes from Google’s announcements and help pages, read on the day of publication. The rollout is in progress and details may change after publication.
The AI AdoptionFree AI pre-audit 