Here we are again. Google has just offered a huge upgrade choice for its 2 billion Gmail users, and this time you need to decide very carefully before jumping onboard. We are heading quickly into uncharted territory, and there’s likely no turning back.
Following hot on the heels of AI-fueled relevancy search, Google has now teased a much more wholesale AI offering for Gmail users. Smart replies — which have been evolving anyway — will now use your past emails and even Google Drive data to better mimic your tone and style and even shape the content of how you reply to emails.
“Gmail is getting personalized smart replies that incorporate your context and tone,” Google says. “Draft replies will sound authentically like you and match your typical tone, as the responses are created from past emails and Drive files.”
But as The Verge explains, “the improvements build on Google’s ‘contextual’ upgrade to smart replies it introduced last year… But they could still only bring in information from the Gmail thread you were in. With the changes announced today, smart replies will theoretically be able to include a lot more context than before.”
This upgrade will roll out across both Android and iOS as well as the web. As ever, it will be limited to English to begin with and then will expand. Perhaps more than any other AI upgrade, this is the tipping point for users. How much is too much and where exactly is the trade off between convenience and privacy when it comes to email.
There is also a disconnect at the center of the latest upgrades coming to Gmail. Its introduction of a form of end-to-end encryption is incompatible with the various AI upgrades it is also introducing. AI can’t see encrypted emails. At some point there needs to be a policy statement as to where email is actually heading.
For home users crafting the perfect reply to a contractor or moving the weekend’s dinner plans, this will be fine. But apply these upgrades to an enterprise setting and we start to see a raft of concerns as AI runs wild across private, confidential, sensitive data.
Per Android Authority, “of course, enabling this feature means giving Gemini permission to access your emails and scan the contents of your Google Drive. So, if privacy is a concern, the feature may not be for you.”
As fun as all this sounds, I would urge caution before jumping in — we are still at the early stages of these changes, and we have no clue yet as to the privacy and security risks millions if not billions of users will now be taking.
“Try it yourself later this year,” Google says.
Decide carefully.
