Would you let a robot respond to your mail? Well Less.Mail just announced an artificially intelligent piece of software that will do just that. It comes in the form of an Android app called Less.Mail, and it’s currently available by invite-only. It’s an interesting idea, but it must be a nightmare to execute.
When a new email comes in, Less.Mail will read it aloud, and all the user just tells the app to accept or reject invitations. In the video, when the user’s boss asks him, “How is that report coming?” The user tells the app, “Just tell him I’m working on it.”
It sounds great if it works, but that’s a lot of trust to put in a computer. When my boss asks me about my work, I usually like to be double extra sure I’m in control of the reply. After all, it’s not like other AI-based software has really instilled confidence in robots’ abilities to act like humans. And software has a hard enough time just figuring out what email you want to look at, much less how to respond to it.
But hey, AI is getting better every day! And maybe, just maybe, Less.Mail is onto something. Sign up for your own invite here. When I get mine, I’ll report back with the results of my let-the-machine-deal-with-the-boss experiment. Hopefully it will at least be funny. [TechCrunch]
Picture: Robin Labs