5 simple ways AI can cut email time to near zero

Let’s be honest: email kinda sucks. It’s not just the writing: it’s also the reading, the sorting, the figuring out what the third reply in a 15-message chain is supposed to mean.

The good news is that artificial intelligence is now genuinely helpful when it comes to the soul-crushing drudgery of email. Free up the hours you spend every week typing, reading, and agonizing with these practical, AI-infused ways to tame your email.

Instant thread summaries

We’ve all been copied on the 27-reply thread with the subject line, “RE: FW: Re: Quick question.” Reading it is an act of sheer madness. Don’t.

Use an AI assistant built into your email client—such as Gemini in Gmail, Copilot in Outlook, or features in services like Superhuman and Shortwave—to generate a one-paragraph summary of the entire conversation.

You’ll get the action items, the key decisions, and the final context in seconds.

Context-aware drafting

You know what you need to say, but forming the polite, professional, and correct sentences takes energy you don’t have.

Use your email service’s built-in AI reply generator. With one click, your AI can draft a response, often 90% perfect, and all you’ll have to do is polish and send.

Here’s how to do it with Gmail and with Outlook.

Batch prioritization

Your inbox treats all emails equally, which means the notification for a company-wide memo announcing leftover Panera in the break room hits just as hard as the one from your biggest client.

Employ smart filtering tools, such as SaneBox or Shortwave, that use machine learning to sort mail into custom folders like “Urgent/Action,” “Later/Digest,” and “Newsletters/Reading.”

This frees your primary inbox for only the messages that require immediate action from a real human.

Tone and style refinement

Ever written a draft when you’re annoyed, only to read it back and realize you sound like an unemployable crank? Thankfully, AI can be your sanity check and personal PR manager.

Most generative AI tools include a tone adjuster. Draft your email quickly, then use a prompt to change the tone to “professional,” “friendly,” or “assertive but brief.”

The AI restructures the language to hit the right emotional note, preventing misunderstandings and eliminating the “draft-read-delete-rewrite-overthink” cycle.

Automated follow-ups

The sales process, the project check-in, the reminder to your colleague: follow-up is a mundane yet recurring element of work.

Use an AI tool such as Mixmax or follow-up features in your company’s CRM to automatically schedule a “nudge” email to send if the recipient hasn’t responded after a set number of days.

Better yet, some tools use AI to suggest the optimal time to send based on past recipient behavior, resulting in far less manual tracking of open loops.