The latest email from your boss or loved ones may have been written by Artificial intelligence (AI) — and it’s only the beginning. The Google I/O 2023 event introduced the “Help Me Write” feature in Gmail, and it’s now available to Workspace Lab users on both desktops and mobile devices. However, there’s every chance you don’t have it yet as it’s a limited feature.
Help Me Write isn’t the first we’ve seen of Gmail adopting AI to improve email experiences. Recall Smart Compose and Smart Reply, both longtime features that offered suggestions or completed sentences as you typed, saving you time and effort.
Now, imagine Help me write taking it a step further. It uses advanced Generative Pre-Trained Transformers (GPTs) and AI models to create and recommend entire drafts based on your prompts and context.
You should see it as a pencil icon with a star when composing your messages on the Gmail app or the web-based version. A cooler trick involves swiping right on your screen to launch the AI composer.
How it works is quite simple. First, you’ll tap the button, enter a prompt, and wait for the AI to understand it. This part takes seconds.
Let’s say you’ve just received a promotion, and you want to thank your team or organization. You could type something like “Write a heartfelt thank-you email for my recent promotion to [position name].”
Next, the feature generates a sample for you to edit and insert into your email. Sometimes, it gives you variations to choose from. You may modify and the text to make it feel like your own. Your options also include shortening, formalizing, elaborating, or recreating the draft.
Ironically, you still need to type
Help Me Write relies on prompts to understand your intent. This means you need to press keypads on your phone or hit them on your computer. You may be thinking, “why not just write the email myself then?”
Despite requiring this much effort on your part, the feature remains valuable in terms of ideation. Help Me Write isn’t meant to replace your ability to type messages, but present a means of escaping annoying writer blocks. It handles the heavy lifting of creating sentences, paragraphs, after which you only need to refine their structure to fit your needs.
That said, typing is a problem you can easily solve with Google’s voice typing — or just use the inbuilt Draft with voice button that Google is currently working on, as reported by The SP Android.
The AI feature may be a long way coming
Google hasn’t officially announced a release date for Help Me Write outside of Workspace Labs. So you’ll need to enroll for it on the official website or ask your Workspace admin to submit a request on your behalf.
If you’re unable to access Workspace Labs, Gmail offers other effective AI features such as Smart Compose and Suggested Recipients, that make your life easier. There are also alternative composition tools with similar capabilities you can download from the Google Play Store or use on the web until Help Me Write becomes widely available.
