The gain, as far as local AI goes for Google, is that, at Google scale, the CPU/GPU time to run even a small model like Gemma will add up across Gmail's millions of users. If clients have the hardware for it (which Pixel 9's have) it means Gmail's servers aren't burning CPU/GPU time on it.
As far as how Gmail's existing offline mode works, I don't know.
To make the discussion easier, we can look at the state of GMail before widespread AI was a thing.
(I have to use some weaselwording here, because GMail had decent spam detection since basically forever, and whether you call that AI or not depends on where we have shifted the goalposts at the moment.)
The gain, as far as local AI goes for Google, is that, at Google scale, the CPU/GPU time to run even a small model like Gemma will add up across Gmail's millions of users. If clients have the hardware for it (which Pixel 9's have) it means Gmail's servers aren't burning CPU/GPU time on it.
As far as how Gmail's existing offline mode works, I don't know.
To make the discussion easier, we can look at the state of GMail before widespread AI was a thing.
(I have to use some weaselwording here, because GMail had decent spam detection since basically forever, and whether you call that AI or not depends on where we have shifted the goalposts at the moment.)