Readdle, a company that’s responsible for a bunch of productivity apps, has brought out an update to its mail app, Spark Mail, that uses AI to summarise long emails into a few lines.
Called ‘+AI Summary’, it’s available in a new update to Spark Mail, available to premium users at $59.99 per year with a seven-day free trial on Mac and iOS. An ‘ai’ button will now be visible to generate a ‘Summary’ of whatever email you choose.
For example, this could be useful for reading those long threads of emails where you don’t know where to start. Or you could be signed up to a bunch of Newsletters, and you want a quick summary of the topics without manually filtering through the bloat.
This isn’t the first time that Readdle has used AI for its apps. Back in May 2023, it introduced Spark +AI to help generate short emails with a few prompts, alongside being able to use AI to organize your inbox. But all of these AI features feel genuinely useful, and that’s an important factor in this recent trend of AI-powered apps and services.
An AI that sounds useful, for once — iMore’s take
I’m a big fan of Readdle’s apps - I mentioned PDF Expert as one of the few apps we wished I had back at school. It’s one of the few companies that seems to understand that AI can be a tool, not a replacement for humans.
Using AI for email is a new trend that a couple of other email clients are also introducing. Canary Mail has a ‘copilot’ feature that lets you compose emails, alongside being able to shuffle through your unread mail to prioritize what needs looking at.
Google is also looking into this category, with features allowing AI to compose an email as well as being able to re-arrange your tabs in your inbox.
But for me, it’s Spark Mail that’s clearly using AI as a silent and useful tool, rather than an assistant that writes up emails for you.
I’m curious to see where else AI can fit in Readdle’s other apps, such as Calendar and PDF Expert. But for now, AI in email is an interesting frontier I’m keen to explore in the future.
