Yahoo bets on AI for major mail update in a decade

Yahoo is adding new artificial intelligence tools to its email service to better connect with Gen Z and millennial users.

The company announced on Thursday that it will introduce AI-powered features to Yahoo Mail, aiming to simplify how people manage their messages. Bloomberg reported these changes represent the first major upgrade to Mail in a decade.

One of the highlights is a gamified feature called “Catch Up.” It uses AI to summarize threads and provide previews so users can decide at a glance whether to delete messages or keep them in their inbox. Yahoo says this will help clear out clutter more quickly.

Yahoo has long struggled to keep up, especially against rival services like Gmail, which offers a simpler, more intuitive interface. The company also faced a major setback in 2013, when a security breach exposed data for all 3 billion of its users, eroding trust in the platform.

Since joining in 2021, Chief Executive Jim Lanzone said there’s “no doubt” Mail remains one of Yahoo’s core products. “People have been writing off or predicting the death of email for years,” he said. “But it has an incredibly consistent role in people’s lives, both at home and work.”

Lanzone noted that nearly half of Yahoo Mail’s current users are either Generation Z or older millennials. He also said that roughly one in three Americans now use the service.

“AI is incredibly important to almost every product that we operate,” Lanzone said. He added that they want it to work quietly in the background, simplifying tasks in search, mail, finance, and news without asking users to learn new behaviors or take extra steps.

Lanzone described Yahoo as a “vintage” brand that he believes will last. “We’re just getting started because we believe there’s a lot of innovation that can be done,” he said. “There is so much more on our roadmap.”

Google’s AI tools are killing traffic for news publishers

Meanwhile, Yahoo’s rival, Google, is facing its own AI-related challenges, as The Wall Street Journal reported that the search giant’s AI tools are cutting into traffic for news publishers.

Since people can now ask a chatbot for answers, often based on news content used without publishers’ permission, they no longer need to click on Google’s blue links. That shift has led to a sharp drop in referrals, cutting off a key source of traffic for many news sites.

Google says its AI Overviews feature has boosted search traffic, but publishers may not benefit. Data from analytics firm Similarweb shows that the share of organic search visits to The New York Times’ desktop and mobile sites fell to 36.5 percent in April 2025, down from 44 percent in April 2022.

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