After making news this year with a driverless car, a robot dog, and the development of a contact lens which measures blood-sugar levels in the tears of diabetics, Google’s email service now promises to compose your email replies for you. As per a post on the Gmail blog by Software Engineer Bálint Miklós, the new feature is called Smart Reply and is intended to suggest short responses to emails on mobile devices: “Smart Reply suggests up to three responses based on the emails you get. For those emails that only need a quick response, it can take care of the thinking and save precious time spent typing. And for those emails that require a bit more thought, it gives you a jump start so you can respond right away.” The feature is intended to streamline the process of responding to emails on mobile devices and is currently available on the Google Inbox app. 

In response to an email I received asking me to have dinner tonight, Smart Reply offered the following suggestions: “Sure, what time?” “Sure!” and “Don’t think so.” A single click on one of these suggestions places the text in the reply dialogue box. It’s up to the user to amend the message or, if it’s perfect as is, to press ‘send.' Note that Smart Reply didn’t offer a suggestion of “Should I bring anything?” leaving courtesy in the hands of the user. 

The new feature is based on machine learning and like Gmail’s existing spam detection and email categorization features, it is intended to improve over time by collecting and analyzing user input. The blog post notes some initial quirks in the system: “when Smart Reply was tested at Google, a common suggestion in the workplace was "I love you." Thanks to Googler feedback, Smart Reply is now SFW :)”