#ChatGPT for email

[olivergisttv]

How to Use AI to Automate Your Daily Email Replies

Introduction Let’s face it—email is like that one friend who just won’t stop talking. You leave your inbox for two hours, and boom! 50 unread messages. But what if I told you there’s a smarter way to handle this chaos? Enter AI—your new virtual assistant that doesn’t sleep, doesn’t complain, and definitely doesn’t get overwhelmed. If you’re buried under a mountain of daily emails, this article…

[simscakes315]

god writing an email is one of the hardest hardest tasks ever invented. but I will never never ask a robot to do it for me bye

[cannimumsable]

yeah so if you genuinely don't know how to write an email instead of using chatgpt and getting something that 1: has a chance to just fucking suck (and potentially be noticeably AI) and 2: uses stolen content, ruins the environment and indicates to the gen-AI companies that you want more gen-AI bullshit that will steal things and ruin the environment, you can look up how to write an email or look up email examples. here's a website, here's another, here's the wikihow page (it's a bit shit but it does its job), here's a good one for formal emails, and here's an email I sent today (more examples under the cut):

something that's really annoying right now is that most websites are desperately trying to sell you their cool funky AI friend that can write the email for you, and look at me: you have to tell it to go fuck itself (in your head, don't use it). this isn't about you being a moron for not being about to write an email, I struggled with it for a while too, I still do sometimes, writing emails notoriously sucks. gen-AI sucks more.

also, this might not be the case for everyone, but please at least try to learn how to write the email before using chatgpt, it will help you forever. if you have a question about emails or if you're not sure how to write one specific email, you can send an ask: I'm not all-knowing but I'll do my best to help.

I can mostly help for college/high school levels and I am studying in a French school, so the codes may not be exactly the same, but I am in fact being taught by English speakers, sometimes native ones.

I'll give more general advice at the end, but here are a few examples of emails I would send.

If there's even a small chance of your teacher not recognizing you, write at the top something like "I am Name Last name, I am in your X-Y-Z class on Mondays from 8AM to 9AM". This isn't too useful in high school because your teachers likely know you, but in college your teachers might not. This will give them context.

Do your best to avoid typos or grammar errors. Reread your email, especially if the teacher is a language teacher.

Be polite, always, unless the teacher explicitly specified they don't care.

You do not need to beg for anything, don't debase yourself, and if a teacher makes you debase yourself, report them. You shouldn't have to beg for something that you ask for in an email. (so no more than one please per email, and avoid this one please if possible).

If it's possible and safe for you, prefer discussing important matters IRL.

Remember who you're talking to. Is the teacher strict or chill? Younger or older? Are they a white abled man or a Black disabled woman? Are they very into "respect the teacher!!" or do they put themselves at your level? Are you a 15 y/o high school student or a 20 something college student? Is this teacher familiar with you? Have they been understanding in the past? etc.

Generally, despite all my warnings above, a simple polite email will be fine with most teachers. If you're not sure how to identify the above possibilities or how to alter your emails depending on them, just write a formal, polite email (like seen above).

Some universities have online courses that teach you how to write emails. If there is a web-type course in your university and you can take it, take it.

Mine has one. I hate it. They defined a tweet as a "post on a blogging platform". I have to complete it or I don't pass. It still has a good tutorial for writing emails. You are lucky in the sense that emails are like the basic thing that even the boomer teachers know how to do (even if they don't like doing it), so there are a lot of resources for people who haven't written emails yet and need to learn.

If possible, ask your teacher at the start of the year what email to contact them with - if you're lucky, they'll say things about what kinds of emails they want.

If you're lucky still, someone else will send a shit email and the teacher will make a point during the class to remind how to write a proper email.

I put "Dear name" everywhere, but if it's not an extremely formal setting, some teachers will be fine with a "Hello". If you're not sure of the receiver's gender, use their title (Dr. etc).

For the extension: sometimes teachers aren't allowed to give you an extension or are assholes who don't want to give you an extension. In that case, don't bother writing another email (again: don't beg. + it will make them dislike you which you don't want).

This works more in work settings, but I read once that it's good to say "I will be taking a day off" rather than "May I take a day off/is it possible to take a day off". Just say that it's going to happen.

Know your rights. I can't know them for you. Figure out what the teacher can and cannot do through legal documents on your school's website or whatever. Know your rights depending on your state or country.

If you have a bad memory and don't want to have to look up how to write an email everytime, open your notes app or your blocknote or any preferred place to take notes and write down the important. I'd advise to note common greetings, subjects, opening and closing lines. Same for your teachers, if you need to remember which one is a bitch and which one is chill, write their name down with a description.

[ladyaj-13]

I think the thing that most gets me about ChatGPT and it's ilk is - I have just shy of 800k words on AO3, of which most - if not all - I know have been scraped. I'm oldish, so there also were other fanfic sites before AO3, plus all the comments and reviews and blog entries and tweets and a hundred other written forms of detritus formed by life online. My words, taken and fed in to be chewed up, training it, making it stronger.

Easily a million words. Probably substantially more.

And I am just ONE PERSON. It's stolen that from all of us. The scale of the theft is mindboggling.

[aromanticduck]

"You think you're better than me because you don't use AI?" You think others are better than you if you're using AI. If you didn't think your own abilities were inferior, you would use them.

[cpericardium]

I have a lot of sympathy for professors who are tired of being told "don't fight it, just incorporate AI into your lesson plan, teach students how to effectively use AI to assist their writing." It doesn't work. The students most inclined to use ChatGPT for assignments aren't exactly looking for avenues to improve their writing or enrich their understanding of the material. They're looking for a quick way to avoid doing the work at all. My classroom AI policy used to say "you can use it for brainstorming and creating a template." But that didn't pan out, because students who do use it just don't stop there.

All AI-written assignments inevitably end up getting no more than a C- even if I can't prove it (and 0 if I can) because they are simply bad. They look like... I'm reminded of this bit from Conning Harvard (nonfiction book about the guy who lied and plagiarised his way into multiple elite universities):

[scuderia-hamilton]

what i find incredibly funny about this new discourse over Lewis' partnership with an AI company is that i haven't seen this many people speak out against other drivers, teams, or the sport itself using AI. makes me think...

[cringengl]

My lukewarm tumblr opinion, medium heat irl opinion, is that people who can't write emails without chatgpt honestly need to stop and learn how to do it themselves because why are you relying on chatgpt for your professional/academic career

[littencloud9]

why the fuck is she so STUPID

[adrenaline-whump]

Well, Microsoft finally did it. I've used MS Word for literally decades. But on my last update, they added their AI crap, aka Copilot. There's a frickin' Copilot widget on the left-hand side of the page, like literally on the page you're trying to write on, that moves down with your cursor. And you can't turn it off.

So now I'm getting used to LibreOffice.

[Edit: actually, there may be a way to turn it off? But you know they intentionally made it hard to find. My rage is unabated lol]

[swift-sparks]

I bring a certain “AI sucks and so do you for using it” vibe to work that my coworkers who rely on it for every task don’t really like

[wrightfamily]

i’m going to be very glad when this one coworker leaves

[oxymoronicdumbass]

if i have to sit through one more conversation in which i have to listen to someone chirp about the benefits of AI, i am going to stab someone

[rebellum]

Crying and puking and sobbing and wailing and gnashing of the teeth because I can't figure out step 1 of doing my taxes this year (how to do them)

Theres nothing more mortifying than sending an email for which i don't have a good template for. Extra mortifying when websites keep pointing me to the same place but there's NO instruction just a list of tax clinics. Like ok do I.. do I. Email them?.I see no other option so I guess I email them and ask for help on what to do.

[esquie]

pretty sure the customer service people are giving me like chatgpt responses . whatever man ....

[cosmermaid]

PSA for educators-

You will not be able to teach your students the faults of AI just by repeating talking points about how it's bad.

You are going to have to USE AI in order to understand where the faults are. Yes, that means spending time playing with ChatGPT and Character.AI or whatever other AI happens to be in vogue with the kids. AI is a learning algorithm, which means it is constantly shifting its behavior. Some of its flaws get patched only for new issues to arise. However, once you get to know the machine, it becomes easier and easier to trip it up.

People are more likely to believe AI is faulty and can't be used as a research source after they see it fail repeatedly. And in order to make it fail in front of others, you will have to know how to use it and tease it.

Don't worry about environmental impact. There's a lot of nonsense claims about AI using five gallons of water per prompt or other scary sounding numbers which is just not true. Most AIs can be run on the processing power of an average gaming PC, there's already hobbyists who have open source AIs installed directly on their machines and get it to work with their usual processing power.

Educating people is far more important than using a little electricity to gain some knowledge.