Gmail is getting an AI-powered writing assistant on Android, and I’m furious
Bots talking to bots
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Hot on the heels of the arrival ofGoogle Bard, the tech giant’s answer to artificially intelligent internet darling of the momentChatGPT,Googleis bringing a new AI-powered feature to Gmail on Android devices - the ability to ask an AI to write an email for you.
The way this will work is pretty straightforward: a new icon (a wand with sparkles, because AI is simplymagical) will take you to a text box, where you can type in a short prompt that Gmail’s generative AI will use to produce an email. If your prompt is too short, Gmail will suggest that you ‘Keep writing to create a preview.’ Once the bot is happy with your prompt, you can hit ‘Create’ and boom, your email is written.
Google is also working on a ‘Refine my message’ option, which will allow you to ask the AI assistant to edit an email you’ve already written. For example, you can ask it to shorten a message for brevity’s sake, or automatically ‘formalize’ it with more professional language. Amusingly, there are also plans for an ‘I’m feeling lucky’ option, which, uh… I don’t know why you’d want to randomly generate an email to someone, but sure.
WithChatGPT coming to Microsoft 365after its initial integration intoMicrosoft’sBing search engine, Google is clearly worried about being on the back foot in the AI arms race. As such, Bard will be coming to Docs too - though it looks like Google is taking a marginally more cautious approach than Microsoft, which may be wise givenhow poorly Bard’s initial showing went.
If you’re interested in testing out Bard for yourself,you can sign upto take it for a test drive. UnlikeChatGPT, Google’schatbotis currently in semi-open beta, so you will need to sit on the waiting list for a bit before you can jump in.
Opinion: This isn’t needed, and it’s infuriating that Google doesn’t seem to care
If you’ve read any of my other articles recently, you’ll probably be aware thatI’m a bit of an AI skeptic. The topic of AI is already a very divisive one, and the rise of powerful tools likeGPT-4threatens to cost people their jobs. Here’s the thing, though: I genuinely do believe that there are use cases for machine-learning software. We’ve seen AI used to do incredible things, likehelping the blind seeandclearing plastics from our oceans.
Using AI for creative endeavors is much more of a grey area. If we push AI tech to produce more and more content for entertainment purposes, be that writing, art, or videos, we run the risk of flooding the internet with AI-generated content and creating a feedback loop with diminishing returns.
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Are emails a creative endeavor? Sort of. You need to be able to write; I’m sure many of us have shaken our heads in exasperation upon receiving a horribly written, badly formatted email from a professional contact. The arrival of Gmail’s AI assistant on Android could finally banish bad emails from our inboxes - but it poses the risk of creating entirely different problems.
Inour hands-on time with Google Bard, we were impressed by its capabilities but had to call into question its accuracy and lack of citations. This could be the tip of the iceberg; if we all start making Gmail’s AI write our emails for us, then we could find ourselves tumbling down a rabbit hole of chatbots replying to chatbots, a situation almost guaranteed to cause conversational devolution leading to miscommunication, confusion, and upset.
This is my actual concern, and I feel it’s a valid one. We’ve already seen thefailings of AI, and the ways in which human userscan and will abuse it. But it wasn’t actually my first thought when I saw this news. The very first thing I thought was this: why the hell do we need AI to write emails for us?!
It’s rant time, folks. I mean,come on. Are we really so lazy and incapable as a species that we desperately need a machine to help ustalk to each other?How long does it take to write an email?! Even if you’re planning to write a lengthy missive that the AI could produce a lot faster, that just means you’re probably getting into the specifics of something important and you’re gonna need to spend your valuable time carefully engineering that prompt to ensure nothing gets left out!
I’m sorry, but this is just dumb. Nobody really needs a chatbot to write emails for them. Get in the sea, Google.
Christian is TechRadar’s UK-based Computing Editor. He came to us from Maximum PC magazine, where he fell in love with computer hardware and building PCs. He was a regular fixture amongst our freelance review team before making the jump to TechRadar, and can usually be found drooling over the latest high-end graphics card or gaming laptop before looking at his bank account balance and crying.
Christian is a keen campaigner for LGBTQ+ rights and the owner of a charming rescue dog named Lucy, having adopted her after he beat cancer in 2021. She keeps him fit and healthy through a combination of face-licking and long walks, and only occasionally barks at him to demand treats when he’s trying to work from home.
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