AI for email

Partly, yes: an AI can summarise your emails, sort them, suggest replies and write drafts, and the big email services already come with some of this built in. What isn't a good idea is letting it send messages on its own without you checking them, at least until you know how it behaves with your inbox. As an assistant that gets your work ready, it works; as a secretary with signing authority, not yet.

There are three ways to bring AI into your email. The first is what's already built in, like Gemini in Gmail or Copilot in Outlook, which depends on your account type. The second is copying and pasting emails into a chat so it can help you reply, which is the simplest. The third is connecting an assistant to your mailbox so it reads it and acts; connecting means giving it permission to read and, sometimes, to send on your behalf. That's the delicate part: your email is full of client data, so look carefully at what permissions you grant and to whom.

Email is one of the first things people think of delegating, and one of the scariest to let go of. In "Can you automate your life in ten minutes?" I put that promise to the test with my own email, along with my calendar and documents, and I tell you what can really be delegated, what needs checking and what made me waste time.