Will Google’s “Smart Compose” Create Inboxes Full of Gmail-Speak?

From: Corinne Purtill (Quartz)

To: Corinne Purtill (Gmail)

Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 11:08 AM

At its annual developers conference earlier this year Google introduced “smart compose,” a new Gmail feature that helps users complete their sentences. Smart compose scans the content of users’ messages and suggests phrases and words, based on things that Google knows about English (i.e., sentences that begin with H often turn out to be “How are you?”) and things Google knows about you. It builds on Gmail’s “smart reply” feature, in which quick responses like “Thanks!” or “See you there” can be sent with a touch of a button.

To understand how these features influence communication, I’m writing in two places: here on my non-smart work email, where I must create sentences and replies from scratch as if this was 2015, and my personal Gmail account, which has smart compose turned on and ready to go.

Are you willing to play along, Gmail?

From: Corinne Purtill (Gmail)

To: Corinne Purtill (Quartz)

Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 11:10

Sounds good to me!

From: Corinne Purtill (Quartz)

To: Corinne Purtill (Gmail)

Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 11:16 AM

Excellent.

Smart reply, which this month will become a default feature for all Gmail users, has proved divisive since its April soft launch. Some users say that it spares them time, superfluous taps, and the consequences of their worst impulses (“Got it, thanks” is almost always a safer option than a clever-yet-snide reply one might be tempted to compose). Others say that the suggested replies are either inappropriate—early version suggested “I love you” with unnerving frequency—or, more often, fail to capture the sender’s tone.

For example, you, Personal Gmail, also suggested “Like it!” and “Love it!” as potential replies to my previous message, both of which felt a little too eager.

About one-quarter of the world’s emails are now opened in Gmail. If Google itself is helping dictate the content of those emails, will they still read like the people who wrote them? Or will we end up emailing each other in “Gmail-ese,” a generic English dialect that conveys the substance of messages quickly at the expense of individual style? (For the time being, smart features are only available in English.)

Thoughts?

From: Corinne Purtill (Gmail)

To: Corinne Purtill (Quartz)

Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 11:57 AM

I’m going to ignore the three possible replies Gmail has suggested here—again: “I like it!” “Love it!” and “Sounds good to me!”—even though the latter is, upon reflection, something I actually say quite often when ready to exit a conversation. Instead, unless it completely derails the substance of the discussion, I’m going to accept any suggestion Gmail tosses me as I type this. (I think that final “this” is superfluous; Gmail apparently does not.)

I was discussing this earlier today with Quartz colleague Cassie Werber in London, who pointed out that the feature has the potential to erode the diversity of the English language. If we’re all being encouraged to “grab” lunch, for example, when typing “Let’s” to a colleague around noon, will we receive fewer invitations to “do,” “have,” or “get together for” lunch—all subtle variations that convey minute but possibly significant changes in tone and style?

As is often the case with new technologies, smart email may also come with built-in (if inadvertent) biases. Smart reply was developed with the help of a bot that analyzed the contents of billions of Gmail messages, a Google product manager explained to the Wall Street Journal. Gmail may have a minority stake in the overall email market, but it’s the overwhelming favorite among younger users, with 61% of emailers aged 19 to 34 and 74% of those aged 14 to 18 preferring Gmail in 2016, according to one survey. In early versions, casual responses like “Sweet!” and “Awesome!” were suggested frequently, which many users found off-putting in professional exchanges.

Speaking of which: The few words or phrases Gmail has suggested as I type have all been sensible. The thing that comes up most frequently in the ghostly gray type of the suggestion box is “?”—a gentle nudge, perhaps, to just hurry up and end a sentence that’s clearly going to be a question.

So: Are we doomed to inboxes full of Gmail-speak?

From: Corinne Purtill (Quartz)

To: Corinne Purtill (Gmail)

Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 12:31 PM

I don’t think so. AI has been lurking around our digital communications for a while now, helpfully correcting typos in some cases and unhelpfully garbling names and meanings in others. Identifying situations when it’s in our interest to overrule the machine isn’t particularly onerous. iOS has long offered a set of prefabricated text messages to send when declining a call. You only have a split second to decide if “Sorry, I can’t talk right now”—with a period at the end!—will make you sound like a cold-hearted monster to that particular caller, and really, that’s all you need.

Smart email is good at the quick, perfunctory exchanges that fill up much of our inbox: “Got it, thanks” to someone who expects confirmation of receipt; “See you there!” to denote that you are aware of the evening’s plans. Accepting a suggestion is like signing off on the draft of a statement prepared by an assistant who understands you well enough to anticipate what you’ll want to say.

But if you’re temperamentally inclined to care about how you come across in email, you’ll read that draft more carefully, and overrule language that doesn’t adequately convey empathy, or authority, or flirtation, or whatever subtext the words on the screen must carry. The machine may not understand yet when a reply deserves a more nuanced answer; fortunately, we do.

From: Corinne Purtill (Gmail)

To: Corinne Purtill (Quartz)

Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 12:32 PM

Got it!