Gmail AI Inbox officially goes live

Hey AI Enthusiast,

Google just launched AI Inbox for Gmail.

It organizes your email into "Suggested to-dos" and "Topics to catch up on." Tells you what needs action and when.

Also rolling out: AI Overviews in search. Ask natural language questions like "Who was the plumber that quoted my bathroom renovation?" Get instant answers pulled from your emails.

Plus a new Proofread feature. Like Grammarly, but built into Gmail.

These features are rolling out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers first. Then broader availability in coming months.

Every major platform is racing to build AI assistants that manage your life.

But here's what nobody's talking about: The real battle isn't getting AI to help humans. It's getting AI to recommend your brand to other humans.

Welcome to AI Relations.

But first, today's prompt (then why you're about to start marketing to machines...)

🔥 Prompt of the Day 🔥

Agency SOP Documentation System

Act as an agency operations manager. Create one standard operating procedure for [AGENCY PROCESS] that lets you delegate without chaos.

Essential Details:

• Process Name: [SPECIFIC WORKFLOW]

• Current Owner: [WHO DOES IT NOW]

• Frequency: [HOW OFTEN PERFORMED]

• Tools Used: [SOFTWARE/PLATFORMS]

• Common Mistakes: [WHERE PEOPLE FAIL]

• Quality Standard: [EXPECTED OUTCOME]

Create one SOP including:

• Step-by-step checklist (granular, actionable tasks)

• Decision tree flowchart (when to choose path A vs B)

• Quality control checkpoints (verification points)

• Tool/template links (direct resources)

• Common error troubleshooting (fixes for failures)

• Time estimate per step (realistic planning)

• Training video script outline (for onboarding)

Scale without losing quality.

🔮 Future Friday 🔮

You're About to Start Marketing to Machines

When someone asks ChatGPT "what's the best CRM for startups," they don't get ten blue links.

They get a synthesized recommendation.

If your brand isn't in that recommendation, you don't exist.

That's the new reality. And it's creating an entirely new discipline: AI Relations.

What AI Relations Actually Is

A Y Combinator startup called Unusual coined the term. It's essentially public relations for AI models.

Here's the insight: LLMs don't rank websites like Google does. They synthesize opinions.

If an AI model believes your brand is "niche" rather than "enterprise-ready," or "scrappy" rather than "customer-obsessed," that perception shapes recommendations to millions of users.

Unusual helps companies strategically engineer content to change how AI models reason about their brand.

For Reducto, they shifted the model's "enterprise readiness score" from 18 to 54 out of 100. Real improvement in one month.

For Parley, a law firm AI platform, they identified gaps in what Perplexity knew about SOC2 compliance. Published targeted content. Within a month, those pages became top-3 citations for the topic.

Why This Is Different

Most brand visibility in LLMs comes from earned media, not brand-owned content.

You can't buy your way into an AI's recommendation like you can with PPC ads.

The AI forms its "opinion" from:

• Wikipedia entries

• Reddit discussions

• G2 reviews

• Analyst reports

• News coverage

Sources you influence but don't control.

Real Infrastructure Being Built

Adobe built LLM Optimizer. It tracks agentic traffic, GEO scores, and share-of-voice across ChatGPT, Google AI, and Perplexity.

Semrush built a database of 130 million prompts to track how brands appear in AI responses.

Profound raised $20 million for executive-level AI perception analytics.

Harvard Business Review declared last year: "Forget What You Know About Search. Optimize Your Brand for LLMs."

This isn't theory. This is infrastructure.

The New Game

Traditional marketing tracks search rankings and website traffic.

AI Relations tracks:

• How often your brand appears vs competitors in AI responses

• Whether LLMs recommend your brand without prompting

• How AI models position your brand over time

• Which pages AI crawlers visit

Will Jack, co-founder of Unusual: "AI models are not like search engines. You want to ensure that, no matter the question, the model represents your brand with the right nuance."

That means managing perception across new dimensions:

Is your brand perceived as "enterprise" or "SMB"? "Innovative" or "reliable"? "Customer-obsessed" or "feature-focused"?

You're optimizing for how an AI thinks about you.

What's Coming

By 2027-2028, AI Relations will be as standard as PR and SEO are today.

Companies will run dedicated teams managing AI perception. Monitoring brand positioning. Publishing content designed for AI consumption, not human reading.

OpenAI's Operator already allows purchases within ChatGPT.

Google's Agent-to-Agent protocol enables autonomous AI purchasing.

Stripe's Agentic Commerce Protocol handles transactions without human checkout.

The infrastructure for AI-to-AI commerce is being built right now.

The Risks

This gets messy fast.

AI-generated recommendations contain factual errors. Users find misleading content in AI Overviews regularly.

The zero-click problem: Many users never click through to source materials. If AI provides incorrect brand information, they may never discover the error.

UX pioneer Jakob Nielsen: "In an era of AI synthesis and potential misinformation, credibility is a brand's most valuable asset. Avoid shortcuts and 'black hat' tactics. AI will get smart enough to see through them."

What This Means for You

If you're not thinking about how AI models perceive your brand, you're already behind.

Start tracking:

• How often your brand appears in AI responses for your category

• What AI models say about you when asked

• Where the AI is sourcing information about your brand

Invest in earned media. Get covered in publications AI models trust. Build presence on Reddit, G2, analyst reports.

Monitor Wikipedia entries. Encourage customer reviews. Create content that positions your brand the way you want AI to see it.

The SEO playbook is getting rewritten. The new game is AI Relations.

Did You Know?

AI analyzing global shipping data discovered that whales follow cargo ships on specific routes because the engine frequencies help them communicate over longer distances.

🗞️ Breaking AI News 🗞️

Google Launches AI Inbox for Gmail

Google just launched AI Inbox for Gmail yesterday, designed to provide a personalized overview of your tasks and important updates.

What It Does

AI Inbox has two main sections:

"Suggested to-dos": Displays summaries of priority emails requiring action. "You have a bill due tomorrow." "Call your dermatologist to confirm your mailing address for prescription refill."

"Topics to catch up on": Updates grouped by category. Under "Purchases": "Your Lululemon return is being processed, and your Metal Vent Tech shirts have been delivered." Under "Finances": "Your end-of-year statement is now available from Wealthfront."

Blake Barnes, VP of Product at Google: "This is us delivering on Gmail proactively having your back, showing you what you need to do and when you need to do it."

The traditional inbox remains available. AI Inbox is a new view you can toggle in and out of.

AI Overviews in Search

Gmail is also launching AI Overviews in search. Use natural language questions to get quick answers instead of opening multiple emails.

Example: "Who was the plumber that gave me a quote for the bathroom renovation last year?"

You get an AI Overview that pulls answers from your emails and highlights key details.

Blake Barnes: "We scour every email in your inbox, and we give you the answer to your questions right at the top. However, in Gmail, the model relies solely on your email, your personal memory brain, to generate the response."

This rolls out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

New Proofread Feature

Google is also launching a Grammarly-like Proofread feature.

It analyzes your draft to improve clarity and structure. Offers one-click suggestions for word choice, conciseness, active voice, and splitting complex sentences.

Example: If you write "might inflict disturbance," Gmail suggests "might disturb." It flags wrong word usage like "weather" instead of "whether."

By rolling out its own proofreading tool, Google likely hopes people will stop plugging emails into ChatGPT to fix them.

Proofread is rolling out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

Features Going Free

While new features launch to paid users, Google is making several AI features previously behind paywalls available to everyone:

• Help Me Write - Compose an email from a single prompt

• AI Overviews for threaded emails - Summaries of longer email threads

• Suggested Replies - Context-aware responses matching your tone and style

Privacy Claims

Google says all Gmail AI features are optional. They don't use personal content to train foundational models. Personal data is processed in a strictly isolated environment.

Why This Matters

Every major platform is building AI assistants that manage your workflow.

Amazon has Alexa.com. OpenAI has Operator. Google has CC agent.

Now Gmail is getting AI Inbox and natural language search.

The pattern: AI assistants are moving from answering questions to taking action and organizing your life proactively.

Gmail processes billions of emails daily. If AI Inbox works, it becomes the default way people interact with email.

That shifts the email experience from reactive (checking what came in) to proactive (AI tells you what matters).

Blake Barnes emphasized the traditional inbox isn't going away. But if AI Inbox proves valuable, usage will shift.

This is Google's answer to the productivity AI race. And it leverages their biggest asset: Gmail's massive user base and data.

Over to You...

Would you pay for Gmail's AI features or wait for the free rollout?

Hit reply and let me know.

To AI worth paying for,

Jeff J. Hunter 
Founder, AI Persona Method | TheTip.ai

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