Gmail's smart replies just got longer, but there's a catch ($)

Gmail has long offered Smart Reply functionality, letting you choose from three quick responses when responding to an email. What if you need to quickly send a longer response, though? Well, the company has a solution.

Google announced on its Workspace blog that Gmail is now receiving contextual smart replies powered by Gemini. This delivers much longer smart replies crafted by the firm’s chatbot.

You can hover over each smart reply to get a preview of the response in your email window, with a tap inserting the generated reply into the draft. Naturally, the response can be edited as you see fit. Either way, this delivers a much longer response than normal smart replies. It also saves you from having to enter a prompt using Gmail’s Help Me Write tool.

The bad news is that you’ll need a $20/month Google One AI Premium plan to take advantage of Gemini-powered smart replies in Gmail. However, the feature is also available to Google Workspace customers with the Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education, and Education Premium plans.