disclaimer: i work at google, though not in anything remotely related to this

despite all the naysaying in the thread, this seems like a really good use of AI to me, especially if it can grow to learn your preferred/habitual speech patterns. if you type "awesome. thanks." a lot in reply to emails, why should a tool not make that a one-click operation for you? canned email replies does sound like a very unambitious/unexciting arena to develop this technology in, but the basic idea of AI working with you as a sort of surgeon's assistant who puts the right instrument in your hands just when you need it excites me just as much as the sexier "100% autonomous everything" applications.

Any reply which is brief and generic enough for an AI to write it for me can be written in a short enough time that finding the mouse and clicking the appropriate button won't save me any appreciable effort.

Actually take that as a challenge -- I would be interested to be proven wrong.

Try it on a mobile device then - the most popular computing platform type on the planet.

Then try to do it while getting off of a subway after work.

Additionally, try to find an average person and do it again. Most people are really, really bad at typing.

But it's always living in the past. It would be more useful if I could adjust or direct it more purposefully.

Because there will be times when you don't want to say "awesome, thanks," and now you have to strip the email clean, and be sure to catch it. And who knows what other quirks the AI might mirror, like poor grammar, misspelling, etc.

but that's the point; it doesn't insert anything into the email for you. it just provides a simple button click to say that, making the common case easier.