'I'm Sorry, Dave': Overcoming the Limitations of an AI Email Writer
Updated: Mar 29
Have you ever hit "send" on an email, only to immediately reach for an "undo" button? What if it wasn't you who sent it, but rather a tool you began using with the intent of improving your entire email process? After all, communication can sometimes be hard enough without the potential of your tools working against you.
An AI email writer is a wonderful tool to help people speed up and refine their communication. Despite these benefits, such a tool sometimes needs a human hand to ensure it stays on target. So, read on to find out how an AI-supported workplace can maintain clear communication and learn how to avoid some of the more common pitfalls.
The Promises and Challenges of an AI Email Writer
In the modern world, AI tools for email writing offer us unprecedented efficiency. Drafting a day's emails used to take hours, especially if we wanted to ensure everyone understood the nuances of what we were trying to say.
Now, this process occurs in seconds, bringing both benefits and hurdles you will need to overcome.
What Email Writers Excel At
These systems can analyze vast datasets to ensure they communicate the correct message. Not only this, but their access to the full legacy of human communication allows them to craft emotionally engaging text. This offers the benefit of more engaging writing and a higher level of interaction from the recipient.
As AI technology evolves, we are starting to see it become one of the best tools when it comes to:
Automating routine email tasks
Generating multiple draft options
Improving language quality and ensuring emails appear professional
Creating templates for common email types
Adapting over time to preferences and sender feedback
We are already discovering how it can free up time for us to perform business-critical tasks. It also reduces the risks inherent in human error and can give you assurances of accuracy in any data you try to communicate.
Navigating the Hype and Setting Expectations
Discovering an AI for writing emails free of charge can offer you a huge boost to productivity. Still, you need to make sure you know what it can and cannot do well.
First of all, you must understand that such content creation services are tools to aid, not replace, human oversight and creativity. Thus, set realistic expectations for how well an AI will perform in such a role. If you work with a team, try to foster this understanding in others as well, to ensure you all align when it comes to the use of such systems.
Avoiding the Blunders of a Rogue AI's Overreach
When you first start using AI to produce your emails and other communications, you may want to let it do everything. This is one of the more common missteps people take, so try to ignore this temptation.
Avoiding AI writing mistakes should be one of your main priorities, so take some time to train yourself in its effective use before you dive in. Generating content using a language model is much the same as using any other tool, and it will take time to perfect your methods.
If you start to use AI generation tools in your emails without editing, for example, your messages can start to appear very similar. Many generative tools have a style or voice, and as you write, you should ensure your message uses your voice, not that of the language model.
Proofread any messages the AI develops to find locations where it does not sound like you wrote it. Then, offer feedback to help it understand your unique writing style. For example:
Input or upload examples of your writing to the AI
Guide it with specific examples of where it goes right and wrong
Offer clear guidelines for different types of email
Actively edit what it builds for you
Give the AI the final version of any email you build so it understands what you prefer
Personalizing your messages can also have a profound impact on your professional relationships. If people believe you are offering them a personal touch, especially as people use generative tools more, you will stand out from the crowd.
Leveraging Existing Artificial Intelligence Research
Plenty of work has already occurred with the intent of finding the best ways to work with AI. Utilizing the results of this pre-existing research can put you ahead of your competitors.
As one example, make sure you also understand some of the most common phrases that allow you to get high-quality content out of the AI. Several journals also highlight specific methods that can help increase the accuracy of your writing. Leveraging each of these can help ensure you avoid creating content that does not align with your company's values.
The Limits of Using AI for Email Writing
Despite its advancements, AI-driven email creators still struggle to follow complex instructions. Humans can contextualize and complete steps that an email creation AI will ignore or avoid because it cannot fulfill every request at the same time. This can lead to problems with the output you receive.
There are ways to prevent these issues from occurring, though, so that you can protect your business from such faux pas.
Learning From Real Instances of AI Writing Issues
While AI is a fantastic tool, it is not always perfect. Despite its power and accuracy, it sometimes has issues when it does not fully understand a request or needs more information.
Often, when it cannot figure out what to do, such a text generator will try anyway. In some cases, this means writing nonsensical text, and in others, it means making up facts and producing lies. These are known as "hallucinations".
In 2023, for example, one attorney using AI to help their case did not realize that their software was hallucinating whole court cases. When said cases were used as precedent in front of a judge, the attorney was rightly reprimanded.
Automated customer communications tools have similarly fallen foul of such hallucinations. One such example is that of Air Canada needing to compensate a customer who received bad information from an AI-powered chatbot.
When it comes to an email writing AI app, situations like these can have significant consequences on your professional image. So, make sure to fact-check anything you might send if you are not sure whether it is true.
Teaching an AI Assistant the Nuances of Unique Relationships
You are likely to get emails from a wide range of people in your role. These may be important clients, business acquaintances, or even your own family.
Each subsection of your email contacts will need a unique response style. For example, you do not want to send messages to repeat clients that make them feel like new customers.
Delve into the customizability of any intelligent email writing system you use to handle your inbox. Make sure the AI understands the different groups with whom you intend to interact and changes its tone or language accordingly.
If possible, integrate your email history and relevant documents into the AI, and call on it when drafting emails. This can ensure the content generated takes into account your legacy with each recipient.
Sidestepping AI Limitations in Professional Communication
As you use AI, make sure to remember it is not a replacement for human insight and decision-making. This goes double in a professional setting, where communication is likely to be more heavily scrutinized. Instead of leaning on generative writers such as LLMs too heavily, try to encourage continuous learning to get the most out of AI.
Keeping a Human Hand Involved in Communication
If you work as part of a team, develop checks and balances not only for yourself but others in your group. This can foster a culture of cooperation in the use of AI and allow you to teach one another how to get more out of the tool.
If a writing generator such as this is new for your company, offer training sessions. You can use these to teach others how to use generative email tools to get the best results.
Assuming Good Intentions When Possible
As AI emails become more ubiquitous, we all need to understand that we are going to be both sending and receiving non-standard messages. Make sure that if an email comes across as out-of-character or even insulting, give the person leeway to improve. Offer feedback if necessary, but also consider that the other person is making an effort.
If you or anyone else in your business is ever unsure about the tone of the message, one of the best things you can do is check. Get them to talk to the message sender and learn more about the intent behind the message. This ensures a better relationship between two people, even if the majority of what they receive is not written by the other.
Handling Reduced Human Interaction
For many, the idea of not interacting personally anymore is troubling. Humans inherently want to be social, and tools like an AI email-writing tool feel as though it diminishing that potential.
To get around this feeling, try to highlight success stories where AI has done a great job to enhance emails. Allow people to see the specific benefits they will get from using such a system. Also, try to reassure them of how AI will not take their human relationships away from them.
Also, remember that the potential for AI is to free up people's time to allow them to have more meaningful, human-focused interactions.
Improving Your AI Email Experience: Best Practices
Ensuring you use the best AI for your specific needs and preferences is more than choosing a product. You also need to make sure you get the most out of any AI email writing benefits it offers.
If you want to engage in more effective email communication with AI, you need to ensure you always iterate on your methods for generating text. These are some of the things we recommend you do:
Ensuring Transparency in AI-Assisted Writing
We have not yet reached a critical mass of users who are comfortable with people using generative AI for everyday communication. Avoid surprising people with the fact you craft your messages alongside a smart writing tool. This can lead to feelings of wasted time or even mistrust of future communication.
Instead, make sure that you provide a disclaimer to tell people that you used an email authoring tool to help create messages. To offset any worries this may cause, you will also want to explain that you read each message to check for errors before you send it out. This way, you can sidestep potential misunderstandings and even ask for external feedback to help improve your AI further.
Checking Each Email Before You Send It
You are still responsible for every email you send, even if an email crafting assistant AI made it. So, check them for mistakes and ambiguous messaging before they go out.
Doing this is especially important when you start using the tool, and your first few messages may take a little more effort to tweak. Over time, though, you should be able to check things at a glance and do little more than ensure the facts are right before you approve the message.
Staying Informed About AI-Enhanced Email Tools
Compared to many other technologies, AI email tools are still relatively new. There are always emerging trends and updates that could do everything.
While you need to be realistic about how much you can stay up-to-date, if you want to stay relevant, you must prioritize improving your AI skills. Try to dedicate a small amount of time each week to learning the latest AI strategies, and you will find it pays off in the long run.
If you are unsure of where to look, or what you should be searching for, why not get your AI to do it for you? You could always get your AI to create a customized newsletter to help summarize the information at a glance.
Comparing MindOS with Other AI Email Writers
Of course, we believe MindOS may be the best email writing AI currently available. We built it from the ground up with a focus on understanding your processes and using that knowledge to help you. By taking on the role of a "Memory Twin", MindOS ensures that it can call on any detail that might be important in your communications or any other task.
How MindOS Avoids the Limitations of Other Tools
With its advanced method of machine learning, MindOS can capture everything that might be important to you or your business. These include:
Conversations and discussions
Documents and Spreadsheets
Meeting notes
Online articles
MindOS can even hold onto fleeting thoughts you might otherwise forget. It can then remind you to discuss them with the right people when you next send them a message.
By crafting a unique, personal history from these details, MindOS can ensure the continuity of any conversation. It can keep the discussion relevant by avoiding repeated questions and driving the flow of useful information. It can then predict information it should include in future messages and include it even before people ask about it.
Breaking Away From GPT-4: Other Unique Benefits of MindOS
Whether you need a premium or free AI for writing emails, MindOS can provide unique benefits that go beyond the capabilities of GPT-4. It offers features tailored for AI email management you won't find in general-purpose language models. This enables it to both understand and adapt to the industry you are in and the way your workplace prefers to communicate.
The system also has many other features that link to AI and provide benefits over and above being a simple "AI writing improvement tool". Make sure to take a look at what MindOS offers and consider how these tools could help you and your business.
Using MindOS to Enhance Your Email Experience
You could be forgiven for thinking that AI cannot match the nuanced touch of a human when it comes to email. MindOS is here to challenge that notion. As a memory-enhanced AI email writer, it breaks the mold and ensures your messages always take into account the context in which you send them.
If you want to enhance your ability to craft unique, dynamic, and useful messages, sign up for MindOS today. Discover the future of AI-assisted emails with a tool that truly understands who you are.
