United Kingdom, Jan. 9 -- Google is rolling out a major set of AI upgrades to Gmail, positioning its inbox as a more proactive assistant powered by its Gemini models rather than a passive store of messages.

In a new blog post, Google said Gmail is "entering the Gemini era", reflecting how rising email volumes have shifted the challenge from simply sending messages to managing information at scale.

The update builds on existing features such as Smart Reply and spam filtering, but pushes further into summarisation, search and prioritisation.

One of the headline additions is AI Overviews, which bring the same concept already seen in Google Search directly into email.

Long threads with dozens of replies can now be automatically summarised...