In summary: The prospect of generative AIs communicating via emails on our behalf has advanced. Google is enhancing Gemini’s smart replies, making them not just longer but also more tailored by evaluating your past emails and Drive documents.
Google’s innovative personalized smart replies can now take into account users’ context and tone. By reviewing past emails and Drive files—upon the user’s consent—the suggested responses can closely replicate the style of the individual crafting the message.
This enhancement builds upon last year’s “contextual” upgrade, which relied on information from the immediately ongoing Gmail thread.
During a presentation at Google I/O, CEO Sundar Pichai illustrated this with an example of a friend seeking his advice on planning a road trip between Colorado and Utah—a journey Pichai had previously undertaken. Gemini is capable of locating notes in Drive, examining former emails for booking information, and more. It can then produce a reply that reflects Pichai’s tone, style, and preferred expressions.
The illustration below shows that Gemini’s responses could potentially compose a substantial portion of an email when there is ample information available.
Additionally, Google is launching a new inbox cleanup feature, enabling users to instruct Gemini to perform specific tasks using natural language, such as removing all unread emails from a particular company from the previous year.
An upcoming feature for appointment scheduling is also being integrated into Gmail. This will allow users to share their booking pages in Gmail whenever Gemini detects that a meeting is being organized.
It will be fascinating to observe how the new smart replies in Gmail are received. Many individuals are hesitant to grant systems complete access to their private data, as evidenced by Microsoft’s Recall controversy. Additionally, generative AI still tends to hallucinate a considerable amount of information. Moreover, would recipients feel comfortable knowing that the person they are corresponding with is utilizing a bot to compose a significant portion of their messages?
These new Gmail features are set to roll out for Workspace subscribers this summer.