Tracy Mumford

Low-income Americans in particular are trading down to cheaper products and buying less, according to grocery executives.

They say they're starting to see the same behavior in middle-class consumers, too.

And finally, if you use Gmail, like a billion-plus people worldwide do, you've likely seen AI showing up on the platform.

Maybe it's offered to write some replies for you, so you don't have to type out, Thanks, that sounds great, yourself.

Now, Google is rolling out even more AI tools, some free, some not, that it says can help people manage their overwhelming inboxes.

For example, you can now find an email by typing a question, like, what's the name of the job recruiter I talked to last month?

But of course, to make the new features work, Google's AI assistant, Gemini, needs access to a user's entire inbox.

And that has raised questions about whether the new tools are worth the potential tradeoff in privacy.

Times tech writer Brian Chen tested out Google's new Gmail for a week.

It automatically generated a to-do list for him based on his emails.

Get back to the pediatrician, fill out that preschool enrollment, which he found very useful.

He didn't love the tools intended to help speed up writing email replies.

One privacy and security expert he talked with said the AI rollout should be a reminder to people that nothing in your email is 100% private.

Google, or whatever platform you use, has access to it.

So does law enforcement with a subpoena.

So the more you start relying on it, chatting with it, telling it about your life and your plans, the more it has access to.

One thing to note, a lot of the AI features Brian tried out are or will be turned on for Gmail users by default.

But there is a way to opt out by going into your account settings.

Those are the headlines.

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