Shortwave email client will automatically show AI-powered summaries

Shortwave, an email client created by Former Google EngineerLaunching new AI-powered features such as quick summaries that will appear on top of an email, a writing assistant to reflect your writing and expanding its AI assistant function to iOS and Android, and multi-selection AI actions .

Startup AI-powered summaries introduced last year, but you have to tap a button to get that summary ready. Now, with the new Quick Summary feature, the client automatically shows the gist of an email or thread in one sentence.

You can tap on that sentence to generate a slightly longer summary and even ask the Assistant questions about the thread. This is especially useful if you’re trying to get through multiple emails quickly.

Image Credit: Screenshot by TechCrunch

To briefly recap, the company says it is using an open source model and its own GPUs to reduce costs. The long summary is generated by GPT-4 Turbo.

Shortwave is also expanding its AI-powered assistant feature, Which was launched in September 2023, for its iOS and Android apps. The Assistant helps you write drafts, search the Web, or answer questions about a currently active thread. Assistant in your email “When was the last time I talked about XYZ company?” Also helps you search queries like, but this is a paid feature.

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ShortWave also has an AI multiselect option, which lets you select multiple threads and ask the assistant questions about them. You may find it helpful to first search for emails on a particular topic or from a particular person and then ask the Assistant questions about those threads.

Image Credit: shortwave

Gmail has Smart autocomplete features for a while now, ShortWave is offering its own spin on AI-powered autocomplete that is capable of writing longer sentences. Users can accept suggestions by pressing Tab, just like in Gmail.

Company co-founder Andrew Lee calls it “GitHub Copilot for email.” The feature will learn your writing and answering style to generate sentences for you, he told TechCrunch on a call.

All these features are rolling out to users from this week. Quick Summary, AI MultiSelect and Mobile Assistant are available to all users. However, the AI ​​autocomplete feature will be available only for Pro and Business plan users.

Since last year, the company has improved its pricing structure. It used to have free, standard ($9 per seat per month), and enterprise plans. Now, it has a $7 per month personal plan, a $24 per month Pro plan, and a $24 per month business plan for teams.

Last September, Lee said the email app had 20,000 monthly active users. Although he did not share any updated numbers, he said that the company is more focused on growing the business and enterprise plans.

“There is a lot of demand for writing and searching emails with AI, especially among power and business users. That’s why we’re moving AI from the side panel to the editor in chief. We also want to help people figure out what is important and what is not important through AI, Li said.

ShortWave isn’t the only email client riding on the AI ​​wave. Both Microsoft And Google has launched AI-powered features for Outlook and Gmail. Meanwhile, email apps like divine And boomerang It has also launched AI-powered features to assist users in writing emails.