If You Spend A Ton Of Time Writing Emails, Check Out This ChatGPT Extension
Factors such as the advance of communications technology and the COVID-19 pandemic have had a big influence on the way people work, ushering in the work-from-home era. To maintain cohesion and communication between employees, different ways of talking with those you no longer (or more seldom) see face-to-face are needed more than ever. This has led, naturally, to the scourge of the email inbox becoming more prominent than ever.
According to Statista, the number of emails sent and received every day around the world is estimated to hit 376.4 billion by 2025. Whether for business or pleasure, that's an awful lot of emails. ChatGPT is expected to revolutionize the way we communicate and save an awful lot of time in the process (though it's not advised to use it to AI-generate your homework), and now it seems that it may be able to write our emails for us, too. The extension for the software is called GhostWrite. It's available on the Chrome Web Store, and it can build full email responses from just a few details.
How does GhostWrite work?
GhostWrite is named partially because it takes much of the actual writing on board for the user, just as a real ghostwriter does. It's also named this because, as is the wont of apps, extensions, tools, and software everywhere, it has an adorable little mascot — in this case, a black ghost with glowing yellow eyes named Inky. As the Chrome Web Store listing explains, the user needs only provide the gist of what they want their email to be about — "Ask my supervisor, Tom, for a raise" is the example given — through a few bullet points or short sentences, and Inky will set about crafting the full text. It's powered by sophisticated AI tools and its emails do indeed emulate the real thing very well.
In a September 2022 post on the GhostWrite blog, the software was used to demonstrate several template emails. For one of them, the prompt was "tell people about ghostwrite, the ai email generator," and the extension had no problem describing how the process works. From a simple prompt in its web interface, "Ghostwrite will then generate a personalized email based on your input ... you can then send the generated email to your list of contacts." It's an impressive piece of software and a potentially valuable tool for those who find their inboxes rather difficult to keep up with (which is most people), but its limitations suggest it shouldn't be solely relied upon.
Why you probably shouldn't stop writing emails entirely in favor of GhostWrite
AI in general is, undeniably, a remarkable prospect, and one that is making tremendous advances every single day. ChatGPT itself is stunning users more and more as its capacities improve – it has already offered its excellent opinion on topics such as the best cars ever created, for example. But, at the same time, there are certain things that such software just doesn't seem ready to handle for itself just yet.
Take GhostWrite's own example of "Ask my supervisor, Tom, for a raise." Delicate matters such as these, the hirings and firings that are the sad necessities of the corporate world, deserve the human touch. A matter of just a few words can make an enormous difference in the tone of a short missive like an email, and when the stakes are high (as they'd be in situations such as these), time, care, attention, and respect are paramount.
GhostWrite acknowledges this itself. Among the primary features listed on the website's product page, it reassures users that while it will automatically draft its emails from the prompts provided, it will not automatically send them, but show the user first. They seem intended more as a quick and convenient base to build on, allowing users to tweak and embellish where they see fit. As is the case with similar software, it also professes to learn more as it's used, indicating that extra care should be taken with Inky's earlier work in particular.