Sometimes it can be helpful to have a second person to help polish an email. If you’re the kind of person who appreciates a little extra help, you can now use Google’s artificial intelligence-based Gemini writing tools to customize email drafts, the company announced Tuesday.
This isn’t the first time the search giant has done something like this. Google already had a feature called “Help Me Write” for generatively creating emails using artificial intelligence, but the company has now adapted it. You can choose from options like “Formalize,” “Elaborate,” and “Truncate” to optimize your messages. Now there’s also a polish option for web and mobile that refines the message and even converts rough notes from a draft document into a formal message that you can then review.
On mobile, the Help Me Write shortcut will now appear in the body of your email. Select it to unlock access to the feature.
Read more: Gmail’s AI can now write emails for you on your phone: Here’s how it works
How does Google’s polishing feature work?
Once your draft reaches 12 words or more, you should see the Refine Draft link. You can then choose between Shorten, Formalize, Elaborate, or Polish.
These options are only available if you have Google Workspace with the Gemini Business and Enterprise add-on, the Gemini Education and Education Premium add-on, or Google One AI Premium. If you are one of these customers, the feature is enabled by default.
Are there any reservations about using Gemini AI?
But be careful where you use the AI’s skills: They might be fine for business emails, but more personal messages require a more personal touch. Google was recently criticized for a TV advert that aired during the Paris Olympics, in which a father claimed his daughter had used an AI to write a message to her favourite Olympic athlete. Many viewers rightly pointed out that it was an embarrassing idea to take the charm out of a child’s honest feelings and hand over a potentially touching letter to an AI.
“I don’t know about you, but I would call this a massive parental failure,” writes CNET’s Connie Guglielmo in a commentary. “The only reason we sometimes gush about kids’ fan letters to their heroes is because the kids produce such charming, honest – and imperfect – tributes in their heartfelt handwritten letters and quaint crayon drawings. Do we really want to encourage young children to stop writing and drawing themselves because it has to be ‘just right,’ which only an AI can apparently produce?”
Google told Guglielmo that while the ad had received good test results before airing – although it did not say with whom – the company had removed it from its Olympic rotation due to negative feedback.
Gemini, formerly known as Bard, is Google’s AI chatbot launched in March 2023 and is designed to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Gemini and other AIs have been accused of hallucinating or making things up, so users need to be on guard and not simply rely on their information. The “Help Me Write AI” feature became available in June 2023.
