Shortwave brings OpenAI’s GPT-3 to Gmail with automated email summaries

Damien Wilde | Feb 27 2023 - 7:59 am PT

Getting the gist of what a long email thread is set to get easier as third-party email client Shortwave is now utilizing the power of OpenAI’s GPT-3 to create thread summaries in your Gmail inbox.

For those not in the loop, Shortwave is the spiritual successor to the popular Inbox. Shortwave has been designed to help you better manage the “traditional” Gmail account, the firm has announced that is going to be used to help generate “Smart Summaries” or a quick summary of your email correspondence.

Not only is this useful in long threads, but it also helps you enter existing chains with a quick rundown of the key information, in turn, this helps save you time. This function even works in different languages by providing a translated summary. Another neat option that take the “Smart Reply” option from Gmail and supes up is the ability to forward any GPT-3 generated summary from within Shortwave.

The new “Summarize” toggle is arriving in beta and will be free to all Shortwave users during this period and could soon be used alongside other Shortwave features. More large language models (LLMs) are set to be integrated into Shortwave and help speed up search functionality, improve email bundling, and more.

As firms race to add AI-powered smarts to their applications and services, there are few true killer applications at this stage. Having what amounts to a TL;DR for your existing and new email threads will no doubt be a useful tool if you receive lots of daily correspondence and struggle to keep up.

While we are unlikely to ever see Google officially add OpenAI’s GPT-3 to Gmail with the firm’s own “Bard” service set to arrive in future, this Shortwave update could be a great place to start with daily AI integration into your existing workflows. You can try it out for yourself right now at Shortwave.com.