Spark Mail Gets 'My Writing Style' AI Email Assistant

[MacRumors]

Readdle today announced the launch of a new "My Writing Style" artificial intelligence feature created for the Spark email app.

Spark already had an option for using AI to write emails in different styles like formal, neutral, and friendly, but the updated AI option is designed to write emails in each user's own voice. According to Readdle, it is able to mirror style, tone, and personality traits "to a degree."

Users can enable Spark AI in the Spark Settings, and from there, the app will select three samples of recently sent emails to analyze writing style. This style will then be applied to AI-generated emails and replies.

AI-generated text can be edited and reviewed before it is sent, and there is an option to disable the feature for those who do not want to use it. Spark suggests that the tool is useful for journalists, content creators, researchers, academics, and professional teams.

Readdle recommends providing simple prompts to the AI to get the best results, such as "write an intro email to Bob and suggest setting up a call at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow."

Spark's AI tool uses Microsoft Azure OpenAI as its AI service provider, and it says that data is not used for model training nor stored for more than a month. Spark Premium is required to use the feature, with the Premium update priced at $7.99 per month or $59.99 per year.

Article Link: Spark Mail Gets 'My Writing Style' AI Email Assistant

 

[Apple_Robert]

All this AI is going to create a lot of lazy, ignorant people, in my opinion. Even if I was hip to being lazy, I still wouldn't pay $60 a year for an email app.

 

[Japan Ricardo]

Hot on the heels of the Google article, all this does is produce generic, emotionless, wordy crap for thick people.

"Feel free to 'hit me up'[.]" WTF? (My full stop, as the AI didn't bother to include one in the image shown - so clever it produces content worse than the original...)

 

[Graham King]

As a lazy person and Spark Premium & Teams subscriber, I’m interested. I’ll try it.

 

[sw1tcher]

Spark already had an option for using AI to write emails in different styles like formal, neutral, and friendly, but the updated AI option is designed to write emails in each user's own voice. According to Readdle, it is able to mirror style, tone, and personality traits "to a degree."

Does this mean that if a person has bad grammar and spelling, the AI-composed email will contain bad grammar and spelling mistakes because it needs to mirror that person's style? No thanks.

 

[golfnut1982]

No Calendar support yet either on the latest version (older version does).

AI be damned. If AI is writing in each users own voice, I'd like to see a demonstration with an Irishman after a few pints writing said email with a few f bombs thrown in for good measure 🤣🤣

 

[entropys]

I reckon I would get annoyed with that “feature” real quick. The modern version of clippy.

 

[coffeemilktea]

That's such amazing news for the, like... 15 people who use it.

 

[Japan Ricardo]

That's such amazing news for the, like... 15 people who use it.

A lot of people use Spark. I used to like it for the templates, ‘remind me’ and ‘send later’ features, but went back to Apple Mail when they added them. Then Spark started adding all sorts of additional ‘premium’ crap - and now this “AI” rubbish. No thanks…

 

[R3k]

All aboard the race to the bottom. Here, communication is meaningless.

 

[AshGuy]

How do we stop these companies adding "AI" features. I don't want you sending my data to third party servers as I type.

 

[Skyscraperfan]

So real people are forced to waste their time reading emails that were not written by a real person?

 

[svish]

Will be very interesting to try this out but the subscription charges are too high for an email app. Should have been much lower.

 

[okieoutwest]

How do we stop these companies adding "AI" features. I don't want you sending my data to third party servers as I type.

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Spark already copying the subject line and partial content of each email to their own servers from Gmail or whichever service is the actual email host? This is what enables many of their features iirc.

 

[Schnegg]

Still just using Spark 2, because I dislike the new UI. I would switch to regular Apple Mail, but that low contrast UI is even worse.

 

[Jason J. Schneider]

Am I the only one thinking about privacy implications here?
Like, where is that text parsed, where is it stored, for how long, is the entire mail I send, is it somehow anonymized? Do they even try? Like, seriously. 🤷‍♂️

 

[IT Troll]

So real people are forced to waste their time reading emails that were not written by a real person?

No, AI will read and summarise these verbose emails. So in this case you just get, “The project is not going well and deadlines need to be extended. The company should consider replacing Sonny if this continues”.

 

[MacFan23]

A lot of people use Spark. I used to like it for the templates, ‘remind me’ and ‘send later’ features, but went back to Apple Mail when they added them. Then Spark started adding all sorts of additional ‘premium’ crap - and now this “AI” rubbish. No thanks…

Spark was such a clean app with a great UI, they really started doing too much unfortunately.

I loved the integration with third party apps, I became a paid user but all the bloat has pushed me away from the app.

 

[Ultracyclist]

I just downloaded it to try, but as long as the new email isn’t in a new window its useless for my office to use this app. We‘ll have to stick to Airmail For now.

 

[Kalzem]

All this AI is going to create a lot of lazy, ignorant people, in my opinion. Even if I was hip to being lazy, I still wouldn't pay $60 a year for an email app.

The assisted generation. Can't do anything without being assisted by "AI".
Why bother learning how to write in English when AI can fix your grammar, vocab and spelling?
Why bother learning how to read beyond high school level when AI can just summarize like you are Michael Scott?
Why bother learning how to draw/paint/animate when AI can just generate **** that your average Joe seems to enjoy?
Why bother learning anything when AI can more or less do it?

We are all on a bullet train to idiocracy, current stop mediocracy.

 

[apveenstra]

Now all we need is a plug-in that can detect if AI was used to generate the received email so we use rules to handle/respond appropriately to these.

 

[SpanishAppleNerd]

Will be very interesting to try this out but the subscription charges are too high for an email app. Should have been much lower.

I love Spark but I don't subscribe precisely for that. Well said

 

[SparkTeam]

Hello, thanks everyone for your feedback - thought we'd give a bit of context. 'My Writing Style' may not be the first choice for short, quick-fire emails, but it can be very helpful if you're crafting longer, more detailed emails. In terms of whether it copies typos and mistakes - the AI corrects these in your draft. We're also pleased to share that a new Calendar is coming to Spark desktop very soon. Finally, re privacy - Spark uses Microsoft Azure OpenAI as the AI service provider for its AI tools, and ensures strict privacy standards. Azure Open AI never stores the data for more than a month, and never uses it for its model training. Visit https://sparkmailapp.com/legal/privacy-app for more details. Best wishes, Team Spark.

 

[nottorp]

How about something really useful, like having one of those LLMs run *locally* and categorize my email by analyzing the contents?

 

[Premium1]

All this AI is going to create a lot of lazy, ignorant people, in my opinion. Even if I was hip to being lazy, I still wouldn't pay $60 a year for an email app.

AI isn't going to create lazy people, we already have a ton of those before AI. And yeah not sure why anyone would pay that for an email app.