Where an assistant helps with email
Most of us spend a surprising share of the workday writing messages. An AI assistant can take some of the friction out of the first draft: it gets past the blank page, suggests a structure and offers wording you might not have chosen. It is less useful for knowing what you promised last week, what tone suits a particular colleague or whether a claim is accurate. Those remain your responsibility.
A good mental model is a quick junior drafter. It produces a plausible first version; you decide what is true, what is appropriate and what actually gets sent.
Give it the pieces, not the whole job
A request like “write an email to my client about the delay” invites a generic message that may apologize too much, promise things you cannot deliver or invent reasons. Give it the building blocks instead:
- Who it is to and your relationship: a long-standing client, a new colleague, a senior manager.
- What you want to happen: the one thing the reader should know or do.
- The facts to include: dates, decisions and next steps, in your own words.
- Tone and length: “polite and direct, under 120 words.”
- What to avoid: apologies you do not mean, promises, jargon.
For example: “Draft a short email to a client explaining that delivery will move from [OLD DATE] to [NEW DATE] because of a supplier delay. Be direct and courteous. Offer a call if they want to discuss. Do not promise compensation. Do not add reasons beyond the supplier delay.”
Using placeholders for facts you will fill in yourself prevents the assistant from guessing. The general method of stating task, context and format is explained in our pillar on writing prompts.
Keep your own voice
AI drafts often sound similar: polite, slightly formal and padded with phrases like “I hope this email finds you well.” Readers who know you may notice. A few ways to keep the message sounding like you:
- Paste in one or two short emails you have written, if they are not sensitive, and ask the assistant to match the style. This is the idea behind example-based prompting.
- Describe your habits: “I write short sentences, use first names and rarely use exclamation points.”
- Edit the draft aloud. If you would never say a sentence, change it.
- Cut filler. Most drafts improve when you delete the first and last lines.
The same approach carries over to text rewriting when you want to adjust a draft you wrote yourself.
Protect private details
Emails often contain names, contract terms, health or personnel matters and customer information. Before pasting anything in, ask whether it needs to be there. You can usually write the request with initials, roles or placeholders and add the real details afterwards. Follow your organization’s rules for approved tools, and take particular care with customer data. If your email software has a built-in assistant, find out what it can see and what the provider does with the content.
Emails about sensitive matters such as discipline, termination, medical situations or legal disputes are poor candidates for AI drafting; the cautions in our article on when not to use an AI assistant apply.
Review before you send
Never send an AI draft unread. A quick but deliberate review should check:
- Facts: dates, amounts, names, attachments mentioned. Drafts sometimes add details you did not supply.
- Commitments: has the draft promised something on your behalf, such as a refund, a deadline or a meeting?
- Tone: would the recipient find it too stiff, too casual or slightly off?
- Recipients: are the right people on the To and Cc lines, and is it safe to include everyone?
- Clarity: does the reader know exactly what you want from them and by when?
Reading the message once as if you were the recipient catches most problems.
Transparency and context
Whether you need to mention that AI helped depends on your workplace norms and the situation. Many people treat it like spell-check or a template, while others expect disclosure for certain messages. If you are unsure, check your organization’s guidance on AI disclosure.
A simple workflow
- Write three to five bullet points in your own words.
- Ask the assistant for a draft using those points, with tone and length instructions.
- Compare the draft to your bullets. Remove anything that is not there.
- Edit for voice and brevity.
- Check the facts and recipients, then send.
Over time you may notice which kinds of emails benefit most: routine scheduling, polite follow-ups and short status updates tend to be good fits. For routine sorting rather than writing, the topic of inbox automation is a separate subject.
Results vary, and no tool understands your relationships the way you do. Use the assistant to save time on structure and phrasing, and keep judgment and responsibility for what goes out under your name.