Gmail's new generative AI feature promises to bring every office worker's nightmares to life.

A lot of office work is a waste of time, and dealing with useless emails is already a huge waste of time. You’re probably tired of your coworkers delegating tasks to you instead of actually doing them, and now they can virtually automate their work-avoidance antics with Gmail and Google Docs’ new generative AI features. So is this a nightmare or a productivity lifeline?

“There are certainly going to be a lot of unintended consequences of generative AI. And increased email volume could certainly be one of them,” Tom Taulli, author of the book “AI Basics,” told Lifewire via email. “Although, ironically, generative AI could help with that to some extent. Summarization is an important feature. So it may become more common to do this with incoming emails.”

The new generative AI features for Google Docs and Gmail are currently being tested as part of Google Workspace. The idea is that you give the AI a text prompt and it can write emails, create reports, and more from there. And it's not just text. It can also create graphics for your presentations and "bring your creative vision to life with auto-generated images, audio, and video in Slides," Google Workspace vice president of product Johanna Voolich Wright said in a blog post