- Gmail is getting an update on Android and iOS platforms.
- You can now use Google’s Contextual Smart Reply feature on Gmail mobile apps.
- Available to Google Workspace customers with Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education, Education Premium, and Google One AI Premium plans.
- Will finish rolling out by the end of this month.
What Is Google’s Contextual Smart Reply in Gmail
Google’s Contextual Smart Reply helps users respond to emails quickly and easily. Here is how it works. Let’s say you received an email from the office asking for more details on your recent trip.
Google’s Contextual Smart Reply will scan your email using Gemini AI, understand its query, sentiments, content, and context, and generate three possible replies. You can choose one of the replies. Furthermore, you can edit the reply to suit your needs better. This makes replying to emails quick and hassle-free and as Gemini AI gets better, so will the replies it generates on the fly.
Google has been busy lately integrating Gemini into almost all of its applications. A few days ago, Google introduced a YouTube chatbot called Ask. You can ask questions regarding the video you are watching. For example, ask for a list of ingredients by watching a cooking video. Before that, they launched Gems which are like custom GPTs on ChatGPT. Google Photos app also got some much-needed upgrades with new AI features under the hood.
How Contextual Smart Reply in Gmail Works
Each reply generated to the email has a unique tone to it. The replies are slightly different with emphasis on actions and sentiment. For example, in one reply, you are giving confirmation while in another reply, you are asking for more time to look into the matter.
Do not mix it up with Gmail’s smart replies feature. Smart replies only offer a one-line answer to the entire email. They usually sound like ‘Alright’, ‘I will get back to you’, etc. However, Contextual Smart Replies are AI-generated responses or replies to the email. They run into paragraphs and actually answer the email properly. They are conversational in nature instead of pre-written suggestions like ‘thank you’.
Each email reply carries a nuanced response to the email with depth and context. If you meet the eligibility criteria and the feature has rolled out to you, you will see three email replies at the bottom ready to edit or send. Here is how it works.
You will see only part of the reply in the box. Tap the reply to see a full preview of the generated response and release to select the reply. If you don’t like what you read, you can press the Undo button that appears momentarily to remove it and select another generated reply. Note that you will need to enable Smart features and a personalization option in Gmail Settings > All settings > General.
And that’s it, folks.
