Meetings can be a real drain on productivity, but a new Gmail feature might at least cut down on the time you spend scheduling them.
The company has announced “Help Me Schedule” is coming to Gmail, leveraging Gemini AI to recognize when you want to schedule a meeting and offering possible meeting times for the email recipient to choose.
You probably won’t see the new AI meeting assistant in Gmail right away.
Google says Help Me Schedule is available to business and enterprise users, as well as individuals with Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscriptions.
If you’re not paying for Google AI features, you can safely ignore this one for now.
Meetings can be a major time waster, but a new feature in Gmail might at least reduce the amount of time you spend planning them. The business has revealed that “Help Me Schedule” will be available in Gmail. It uses Gemini AI to identify when you want to set up a meeting and propose potential times for the recipient to select from.
The new meeting function is similar to Google’s most recent Pixel phones’ Magic Cue. Gmail will be able to identify when you are scheduling a meeting as you type emails. In the toolbar, a Help Me Schedule button will show up. When you click, Google’s artificial intelligence will take over and look for potential meeting times that fit your message’s context and are available on your calendar.
The AI creates an in-line meeting widget for your message when you use the “Help me schedule” option. The meeting is set for both parties, and the recipient only needs to choose a time that works for them. Regarding meetings with multiple invitees, Google claims that groups will not be supported at launch.
Recently, Google has been extending access to AI features across a variety of products, driven by Gemini. The Veo video model is appearing in YouTube and Photos, and the company’s nano banana image model will be used in a number of products. Additionally, Gemini has expanded to Google Home to provide activity summaries and AI-assisted notifications.
Meetings, however, carry greater stakes than YouTube videos produced by artificial intelligence. Although generative AI is not flawless, many people view their calendar as a fundamental productivity tool. A number of Google’s Gemini-powered tools have demonstrated a tendency to overlook email thread context, which can result in events that are not scheduled correctly. You will be able to change the suggested timeslots, at least with Help Me Schedule. The robot’s work needs to be double-checked as usual.
The new AI meeting assistant in Gmail is unlikely to appear immediately. The first users will receive Help Me Schedule over the course of the next 15 days, as this is a gradual rollout (rapid release domains). In late October or early November, the majority of users will start to notice the feature. According to Google, users with Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscriptions, as well as business and enterprise users, can access Help Me Schedule. You can safely overlook this one for the time being if you are not paying for Google AI features.
