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The Goog giveth and the Goog taketh awayeth. I just found a cool new AI feature in Gmail that could prove indispensable for folks with a lot of email. That's the giveth. But the feature is quite limited by how many emails it will process before it just stops. That's the taketh awayeth.
Back in December, Google announced Google Workspace Studio, a tool for automating a variety of tasks inside the platform. Of course, you needed a Workspace account for this to be available. At least then. Now, Studio is open to more users.
As of my article on Gemini in Gmail from back in April, Workspace Studio Flows (Google's name for the little mini-scripts) was not available to my $20/mo Google AI Pro plan account. Last week, though, I noticed a new icon at the top of my Gmail interface.
Gemini tells me this addition is part of a big side-panel update that launched in May, which propagated across so-called "premium" user accounts in late May and June. Premium in this context means you're paying for either the $20/mo Google AI Pro or the $100/mo Google AI Ultra service.
I have Google AI Pro, so I have the magic icon. My wife does not subscribe to that plan, so her Gmail interface does not have the feature I'm about to describe.
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As for whether the AI plans are worth it, you do get more Gemini usage with the paid tiers. My wife uses the free Gemini a lot. She limits her use mostly to text. As soon as I tried to generate more than a few Nano Banana images, I ran into usage blocks. That's why I originally upgraded to Pro.
In any case, I'd say this new Workspace Studio Flows capability absolutely makes buying AI Pro worth it, except for the limitations. That issue nerfs the value, at least for heavy email users (the exact folks who need it most).
Once you click the icon, a Flow side panel will open up. Although Google calls the scripting tool Workspace Studio, the scripts it creates are called "Flows".
Google provides starter scripts you can use as examples for building your own flows.
To make this thing sing, click "Do more in Studio," where you can do (wait for it) more.
Here's where things start to get really interesting. When you land in Studio, you're presented with some more sample options to get started.
Clicking the "Get news headlines summarized daily" flow will present you with the Studio scripting interface. For this first example, the flow notifies using Chat rather than Gmail.
This approach emphasizes an important point: the Studio flows are for more than just Gmail. The flows work with Chat, Docs, Meet, and more. I'm just looking at Gmail because Google has provided a huge upgrade to the filter system that hadn't changed much in more than 20 years.
As far back as 2023, I described how I wanted Gmail to make better use of AI to qualify and categorize my incoming email. Finally, after 31 months, the system does. Well, except for the "taketh away" part that we'll dig into later. Grumble.
Flows need to begin with a trigger, which Google calls a starter. I want Google to properly assign all press releases and promotional emails with journalistic intent to one tag. I have written many filters over the years. But because everyone who emails me about things they want me to write an article on something they want to reach ZDNET's readers about uses a completely different email structure, no deterministic tool can solve the problem.
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But AI can get close. To do so, though, AI has to look at every email that comes into my inbox. And so, I set my starter trigger to "When I get an email." Sadly, I can't use this tool on old email, but hey, I'll take what I can get.
You can choose the tool to scan all emails or messages that meet typical filter tests, such as specific keywords or text strings. Since the latter approach has never been complete enough to work for me, I want all messages scanned. Then I want Gemini to use its considerable smarts to decide whether the email is a cry for journalistic attention.
Once your Flow starts with a trigger (in our case, a new email), it's time to make it do something. I want the AI to determine whether an email has a journalistic intent. My first thought was to use the Ask Gemini action.
But once you execute that action, you have to set up a series of tests and sub-actions. As I scrolled down, I noticed the option Add labels with Gemini, which seemed more precisely targeted to what I wanted to accomplish.
To use this feature, you must turn on AI-powered labels. Studio insists you keep the six labels shown, but you don't have to turn them on. If you want to create your own AI-powered label, click the button.
Here, you can specify the text string you want for your label, as well as the prompt. I used Gemini to help me create a prompt. It took a few tries, but I got back something I liked.
Once you've built your Flow, you can test it out. First, you'll need to pick an email message to test against. Studio will give you a few recent emails, but if you type in a search string, it will bring up other emails you can use as test data. Do that, then run the test.
That's all there is to it. You could, in theory, create AI-powered filters for all sorts of email flow challenges.
There are some limitations. For example, you can use Flows to create drafts, but you have to hand-click them to send them out. There's some value to this approach, because if you write a prompt that's way too open, you have no idea what the AI will send back to people corresponding with you.
Overall, I think this is a really great improvement to Gmail. Except…
The feature I've described is not unlimited. Like every other cloud-based AI service, there are just so many times you can use the AI before the provider cuts you off.
According to Google's limits page, the $20/mo Pro tier gets you 2,000 flow executions per month. In other words, your script can look at 2,000 incoming email messages a month. After that, the service shuts down.
This month has been quite the month, but it's not that unusual. Because of all the Fable news, I received 7,724 email messages in one week. I normally get a few thousand emails each week. As such, the $20/mo Pro tier would last me for, maybe, a week.
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In a busy month (big AI news, Prime Day, winter holidays, etc), I can get well over 10,000 email messages. That's more than even the $100/mo Google AI Ultra tier will allow. Ultra tops at 10,000 flow executions per month.
Whether you find this feature useful will probably be based on whether you're in the Goldilocks zone. You need to get enough email messages that they're too much to manage without some AI help, but few enough to process them within the executions-per-month limitations.
I would likely blow my limits even if I ponied up a Benjamin every month, and that's with just one flow. Building a bunch of flows to truly let the AI help me organize my email to maximize productivity is not even remotely possible with Google's current limits.
One quick note: Gemini reminded me that these monthly limits are waived until July 1. Google has been allowing users to go fairly wild with their flows, but they're cracking down hard as of July 1. That same limits page I pointed to before says, "Promotional access. Limits enforcement begins on July 1, 2026."
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Mid-twentieth-century comic Bob Hope is reported to have said, "A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it." So, here's my simple conclusion. Flows have enormous potential. They are awesome, even in this early iteration. But if you really need them because you have a lot of email to manage, you'll be cut off.
Maybe when (or if) AI costs come down, that situation won't be the case. At least we know the technology is there and implemented. If you're a Goldilocks email user, this capability is a great resource. For the rest of us, the feature will probably be yet another source of AI frustration.
Would a 2,000-email monthly Flow limit be enough for your inbox, or would you hit the ceiling too quickly? Let us know in the comments below.
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