Smart Reply: Gmail’s quick-learning response tech

Weblog: Short email replies can be fired off from iOS and Android

Google’s Smart Reply technology has been around for a while – it is already integrated into Inbox and the Allo personal assistant app. This is a time-saving piece of machine learning that scans your incoming emails and, based on this, formulates a choice of three related replies that can be fired off immediately with a tap.

The responses are short and to the point, eg an email asking for a meeting will generate replies along the lines of “Sure, tomorrow works for me”, “Yes, I can make it”, or “How about tomorrow?” And these responses are not generic – the algorithm learns your phrasing over time and tailors the language to suit you.

Smart Reply is now automatically integrated into the Gmail iOS and Android app, but will not be coming to the web version, which makes sense given that short responses are more likely to be tapped out on the go from your smartphone.