An updated version of Inbox, one of Google’s mail apps, will “read” your e-mails and offer up suggested replies. Those who want a no-fuss experience can stick with Gmail. Similarly, Smart Reply will learn what responses are most appropriate based on which responses the user chooses.
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Google’s Inbox by Gmail app for iPhone is one of the best things to happen to personal email management since email was invented (at least, it is for Gmail users).
While there will never be enough hours in the day to answer emails, Google’s new artificial intelligence system might be able to get you one step closer to Inbox Zero.
To that, Smart Reply generates three responses: “No plans yet”. For example, it can recognize which of your emails are promotions from companies, which are reminders you sent to yourself and so on. Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist at Google, explains how Smart Reply is built on top of a neural network that looks at each word of an email in turn and predicts what a response could look like. For emails that need more input, Gmail will help jump start your message. “But when you’re checking email on the go, it can be cumbersome and time-consuming to reply to all or even a few of them”.
Among the main problems that needed tweaking were the system coming up with three likely responses which largely amounted to the same meaning, and the system being too keen on suggesting “I Love You” as a response suitable for nearly any occasion, something that’s unlikely to be true for users powering through a busy work inbox. For privacy reasons, and to make a machine learning email system truly useful, no human being has access to the data.
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Google will soon scan the content of your emails and serve up what it thinks is the flawless reply. The technology is similar to how Google pinpoints spam in your inbox.
