Connect with us

Technologies

Gmail AI Can Now Write Emails for You on Your Phone: How It Works

Tired of writing boring emails? Google’s new Help Me Write feature has you covered.

Email can be a lot of fun if you’re corresponding with an old friend or a pen pal halfway around the world. It’s less fun when you’re filing multiple insurance claims or sending hundreds of thank you notes. 

Announced at the Google I/O event in May, a new feature from Gmail called Help Me Write can draft those boring emails for you. Powered by the company’s proprietary AI, the new Google service can compose automated messages in Gmail, text messages and other Google apps. Starting today, the feature is now available for Gmail on iPhones, iPads and Android devices.

With 1.8 billion active users of Gmail at the last count, Help Me Write is poised to have a major impact on the way that the world communicates via email. Learn more about how Help Me Write works and how you might use it.

For more on Google I/O, learn all about the foldable Pixel phone and the biggest new features announced for Android.

How does Help Me Write work in Gmail?

The new Help Me Write feature for generative AI email creation in Gmail expands on the «Smart Compose» feature that Google introduced in 2018, as well as the «Smart Reply» feature added in 2017.

Whereas Smart Reply offers basic automated replies, and Smart Compose provides suggestions as you type, Help Me Write goes well beyond, creating a full email from a basic prompt. A «refine» button can shorten the text, elaborate or make the email more formal. You can then further edit the email manually or send it as is.

In his demo at Google I/O, Pichai used Help Me Write to draft an email asking for a full refund from an airline for a canceled flight. Help Me Write created an email from scratch using information gleaned from the airline’s emailed offer of a voucher.

How can I start using Help Me Write in Gmail?

screenshot of signup process for Google Workspace screenshot of signup process for Google Workspace

Google/Screenshot by CNET

Help Me Write is part of Google’s Workspace Labs, and you’ll need to join the program if you want to use AI to compose text in Gmail or Google Docs. Visit labs.withgoogle.com, scroll down to the section marked «Unlock new ways of working with AI» and click the blue «Join waitlist» button to sign up. (We were able to join Workspace Labs from a personal Google account today, immediately, without any wait.)

It’s worth noting that Google’s privacy policy for Workspace Labs is different to its standard Gmail privacy policy. The company takes pains to warn users, «Please do not include sensitive, confidential, or personal information that can be used to identify you or others in your interactions with Workspace Labs features.» Your Workspace Labs data may be reviewed by humans and stored by the company for four years.

a screenshot of Google's Help Me Write button in web-based Gmail a screenshot of Google's Help Me Write button in web-based Gmail

The Help Me Write button shows up next to the Send button in web-based Gmail.

Google/Screenshot by CNET

Once you’re into Workspace Labs, a new Help Me Write icon — a pencil with a star above it — should show up whenever you draft a new email in Gmail or create a new document in Google Docs. In web-based Gmail, the icon appears to the right of the «Send» button. On your iPhone or Android device, it will show up at the bottom of the email.

Clicking on the Help Me Write button in Gmail will open up a prompt window, where you can describe what you want the AI to write. Provided examples include «A glowing review for a team member» and «Wish my friend a speedy recovery in the hospital.»

After you enter a prompt and click «Create,» Help Me Write will generate your text and provide you the options of recreating the text or refining it to make it more formal, more elaborate or shorter. Once you’re satisfied with the text, hit «Insert» to add it to your email, which you can then edit as you like.

two screenshots showing Gmail's Help Me Write feature composing a letter to a mother-in-law about attending her granddaughter's birthday party two screenshots showing Gmail's Help Me Write feature composing a letter to a mother-in-law about attending her granddaughter's birthday party

Gmail’s Help Me Write feature on iPhone shows up as a button at the bottom of new emails.

Google/Screenshots by CNET

For more, here’s what to know about Google’s Bard AI and the company’s AI-powered search engine.

Technologies

Tariffs Explained: Latest on Trump’s Shifting Import Tax Plan, and What It Means

Continue Reading

Technologies

Apple, I’m (Sky) Blue About Your iPhone 17 Air Color

Commentary: The rumored new hue of the iPhone 17 Air is more sky blah than sky blue.

I can’t help but feel blue about the latest rumor that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air will take flight in a subtle, light-hued color called sky blue.

Sky blue isn’t a new color for Apple. It’s the featured shade of the current M4 MacBook Air, a shimmer of cerulean so subtle as to almost be missed. It’s silver left too close to an aquarium; silver that secretly likes to think it’s blue but doesn’t want everyone else to notice.

Do Apple employees get to go outside and see a real blue sky? It’s actually vivid, you can check for yourself. Perhaps the muted sky blue color reflects a Bay Area late winter/early spring frequent layer of clouds like we typically see here in Seattle.

«Who cares?» you might find yourself saying. «Everyone gets a case anyway.» I hear you and everyone else who’s told me that. But design-focused Apple is as obsessive about colors as they are about making their devices thinner. And I wonder if their heads are in the clouds about which hues adorn their pro products.

Making the case for a caseless color iPhone

I’m more invested in this conversation than most — I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t wrap my phone in a case. I find cases bulky and superfluous, and I like to be able to see Apple’s design work. Also, true story, I’ve broken my iPhone screen only twice: First when it was in a «bumper» that Apple sent free in response to the iPhone 4 you’re-holding-it-wrong Antennagate fiasco, and second when trying to take long exposure starry night photos using what I didn’t realize was a broken tripod mount. My one-week-old iPhone 13 Pro slipped sideways and landed screen-first on a pointy rock. A case wouldn’t have saved it.

My current model is an iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium — which I know seems like avoiding color entirely — but previously I’ve gone for colors like blue titanium and deep purple. I wanted to like deep purple the most but it came across as, in the words of Patrick Holland in his iPhone 14 Pro review, «a drab shade of gray or like Grimace purple,» depending on the light.

Pros can be bold, too

Maybe the issue is too many soft blues. Since the iPhone Pro age began with the iPhone 11 Pro, we’ve seen variations like blue titanium (iPhone 15 Pro), sierra blue (iPhone 13 Pro) and pacific blue (iPhone 12 Pro).

Pacific blue is the boldest of the bunch, if by bold you mean dark enough to discern from silver, but it’s also close enough to that year’s graphite color that seeing blue depends on the surrounding lighting. By comparison, the blue (just «blue») color of the iPhone 12 was unmistakably bright blue.

In fact, the non-Pro lines have embraced vibrant colors. It’s as if Apple is equating «pro» with «sophisticated,» as in «A real pro would never brandish something this garish.» I see this in the camera world all the time: If it’s not all-black, it’s not a «serious» camera.

And yet I know lots of pros who are not sophisticated — proudly so. People choose colors to express themselves, so forcing that idea of professionalism through color feels needlessly restrictive. A bright pink iPhone 16 might make you smile every time you pick it up but then frown because it doesn’t have a telephoto camera.

Color is also important because it can sway a purchase decision. «I would buy a sky blue iPhone yesterday,» my colleague Gael Cooper texted after the first rumor popped online. When each new generation of iPhones arrive, less technically different than the one before, a color you fall in love with can push you into trading in your perfectly-capable model for a new one.

And lest you think Apple should just stick with black and white for its professional phones: Do you mean black, jet black, space black, midnight black, black titanium, graphite or space gray? At least the lighter end of the spectrum has stuck to just white, white titanium and silver over the years.

Apple never got ahead by being beige

I’m sure Apple has reams of studies and customer feedback that support which colors make it to production each year. Like I said, Apple’s designers are obsessive (in a good way). And I must remind myself that a sky blue iPhone 17 Air is a rumored color on a rumored product so all the usual caveats apply.

But we’re talking about Apple here. The scrappy startup that spent more than any other company on business cards at the time because each one included the old six-color Apple logo. The company that not only shaped the first iMac like a tipped-over gumdrop, that not only made the case partially see-through but then made that cover brilliant Bondi blue.

Embrace the iPhone colors, Apple.

If that makes you nervous, don’t worry: Most people will put a case on it anyway.

Continue Reading

Technologies

Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.

The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea. 

According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»

The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»

Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.

Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»

K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.

More research to do on finding life on K2-18b

The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.

«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»

Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»

The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»

As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.

«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © Verum World Media