Gmail’s “Help Me Write” Feature Can Now Improve Your Emails With AI
Google continues to strive to help you compose and rewrite emails using AI—whether or not it’s actually useful.
These features, powered by Gemini, come under the umbrella of the “Help Me Write” shortcut and together act as an AI-powered email assistant. Since August last year, the Help Me Write feature has been available, allowing you to rewrite your message to make it more formal, add more detail if you think it needs more work, or shorten your draft if it seems too long.
Now Google is adding a new Polish option to the mix. The idea is to take everything you’ve written, whether it’s a fully formed email or a draft, and refine it into an email that you hopefully feel comfortable sending. Polish seems to make writing more formal by default, so if you prefer a more casual tone, you may have to ask Gemini to rewrite it for you again. (Or maybe write the email yourself?) This feature works on both mobile and web versions of Gmail.
Google is also updating the Help Me Write shortcut on iOS and Android. Now, when you write at least 12 words in your email draft, a new “Refine My Draft” option will appear on the screen. If you swipe it, you’ll discover AI rewriting features like Polish, Formalize, Elaborate, Reduce, and Write New Draft.
These features, and the Help Me Write feature in general, are not available to all Gmail users. To try them out, you’ll need to subscribe to the Google One AI Premium plan , which is included with Gemini Advanced . Additionally, if your school signs up for the Gemini Education and Education Premium add-on, or your company signs up for the Gemini Business and Enterprise add-on, you’ll see these options appear in Gmail. The same goes for other Gemini features in Workspace, such as displaying Gemini in the sidebar .
While these features may entice some to pay extra for Google One’s premium plan, I don’t see the appeal. Of course, if you write a lot of letters, the work can become tedious. But will outsourcing your rewriting and editing work to AI really save you that much time? After typing a few notes, scrolling through the options, and selecting “Polish,” you could probably write the email yourself. ( And it doesn’t look like a bot wrote it .)