Hidden AI in Email

Email is where prices change, arrangements are discussed and customers give or withhold approval. A shorter account of the conversation is useful only if it preserves those distinctions. A polished reply is useful only if it communicates the position you meant to take.

This book helps you look beyond whether the wording sounds right. Through familiar business situations, it shows what can be missing from a summary, how a draft can add an unintended promise and why internal information does not necessarily belong in the customer’s reply. You will know what to look for, rather than simply being told to “check the AI”.

• Understand what an email assistant may have read and why a conversation summary does not establish that its attachments were examined.
• Recognise when a summary drops a payment condition, uses an old quotation or makes an unanswered proposal sound agreed.
• Review generated replies for unintended promises and internal details that the recipient should not receive.
• Distinguish preparing a reply from sending it and understand why discarding a draft does not answer what the AI service retains.

A summary of messages mentioning an attachment is not necessarily a summary of the attachment itself. If the revised quotation contains the price and conditions, the assistant needs to have examined that document not merely the email saying “please see attached”.

People may also review a draft for politeness without checking what it commits them to. Before sending, the important questions include whether the price is current, whether conditions remain attached and whether the recipients should receive every included detail. Generating a reply, putting it into a draft and sending it are separate steps. Discarding the draft also does not, by itself, establish whether the AI service has kept a separate record of the request and response.

Extract from Hidden AI in Email, “What people miss when they just trust AI”.

Russell Parrott is a plain-English writer exploring hidden AI in everyday business tools. He investigates what AI does, what information it draws on and what it can recommend, communicate or change as a result.

He finds where AI is operating inside the tools a business already uses and explains what information it can use and what it recommends, communicate or change as a result. His books turn that research into independent plain-English explanations.