“What this does is it takes an incoming email message and then, given the text of the email message, it tries to predict what are likely responses you might want to give,” Dean said. “Now, 10 percent of mobile responses on email on the Inbox product are generated with this Smart Reply feature, so it’s saving people a lot of time.”
Of course, while 10 percent is a significant proportion, it’s unclear how many emails this actually translates to. After all, the Inbox app is not as popular as the Gmail app (though it does consistently find itself in the top 5o productivity apps in the App Store, and seems relatively popular on Android, too).
It seems likely, however, that the popularity of Smart Reply will continue to grow, as the feature gets better and better the more you use it (a product of being based on machine learning). So if you’re on the go and just need to clear out your inbox in a timely fashion, Smart Reply just may be the tool you’ve been looking for.
Editors' Recommendations
- The best Android Auto apps
- The best email apps for the iPhone and iPad
- How to add a signature in Gmail
- How to find archived emails in Gmail and return them to your inbox
- The best Android apps (January 2021)
