Google will soon allow you to disable smart Gmail replies

"This is good news!"

The Wall Street Journal has been talking to many Gmail users who are a bit surprised by the now fully deployed Smart Reply feature, which analyzes the context of your email and offers three potential answers. Among the anecdotes about clumsy interactions and the abandonment of machine personality, the book also revealed that Google would soon make this feature optional on desktops.

A good, smart answer will be something like "Congratulations!" In response to a colleague saying that they have just received a promotion, so that a bad smart answer could be something like "Thank you very much!" was down and they just want to give everyone a boost on the layoffs are going on. Gmail recently deployed this default feature on the desktop for its 1.4 billion active accounts and the company told the newspaper that about 10% of all Gmail responses are generated by the tool. But even though everyone thought that Smart Reply was "Sweet!" And "Awesome!", Tech companies should give users control over all the settings that they can reasonably offer.

Personally, I can not say that I have used Smart Reply or that I feel strong emotions about it. It's a good idea, although it's a constant reminder that Google is always analyzing my personal messages. But on mobile, he places these answers just under your thumb while waiting to be accidentally selected. I have not understood until now that you can already disable the tool in the mobile application by going to "Settings", selecting the account and dragging the slider next to "Smart Response".

Unfortunately, you will have to wait until next month to disable it on your desktop. We contacted Google to ask if they had a specific date for the availability of the option, but we did not receive an immediate response.

By the end of this month, Gmail will also be rolling out its Smart Compose option to all users by default. It is essentially a contextual auto-entry tool that attempts to fill in complete sentences in your answers.

Many email interactions simply require a robotic response. So I did not feel disconcerted by Smart Reply, but I'm afraid it's too obvious that I'm using stock responses. For the moment, I disable it on my phone, but I encourage you all to continue to use it so that it improves and I can come back to reap the benefits.