Shortwave's AI Assistant: Instantly Ask Questions About Your Email History

Since the rise of large language models (LLMs), many developers have created tools that leverage OpenAI’s GPT or Anthropic’s Claude to assist users in crafting emails across various tones and formats. Shortwave, an innovative email client founded by former Google employees, is unveiling an AI-powered assistant that enables you to inquire about your inbox intelligently.

One of the standout features of this assistant is its ability to find specific emails based on natural language queries, once you grant access to your email history. For instance, you can ask, “What was the link to the video the client sent about Project Cricket’s bugs?” or “Which emails discussed SaaS startups last week?”

Shortwave’s AI assistant is now available to all users. To get started, simply click the AI icon located in the top right corner.

Thanks to the LLMs' formatting capabilities, you can also make requests like, “Summarize emails about Project Cricket from last week in bullet points.” Notably, Shortwave introduced an email summarization feature back in March.

In addition, the assistant includes essential AI-driven email functionalities such as drafting emails in various formats, enhancing your writing, translating text, summarizing conversations, and condensing lengthy emails.

Moreover, since Shortwave’s assistant can access your calendar, you can ask it to draft meeting proposals with suggested timings as well.

Andrew Lee, the CEO of Shortwave, explained that the company employs a combination of several models for its assistant. This includes Instructor-xl and GPT-3.5 for search functionalities, Pinecone’s vector database for long-term memory and broader context, MS Marco for re-ranking emails post-retrieval, and GPT-4 for delivering user-friendly output.

With over 20,000 active users, Shortwave emphasized that it does not train these models on any individual user data.

Additionally, the company utilizes GPT-based models, allowing users to search for real-time information such as the latest iPhone prices and screen sizes without leaving the app.