7 ways to write emails with AI in Shortwave

Picture this: You're sipping your morning coffee, and instead of dreading the mountain of emails waiting for you, you're excited. Why? Because with Shortwave's new feature, instant AI replies, responding to emails has never been easier. In just one click, you get a complete, contextual draft that sounds exactly as if you had written it yourself. With this latest launch, Shortwave now offers seven powerful ways to use AI to write emails, making it the best AI email writer on the market.

By offering multiple AI-powered options, Shortwave ensures that you have the right tool for every situation.  For common responses (like “thank you!”) you may just want a quick way to save yourself some typing.  For more complex emails, you may want the AI to do much more, including searching your email, doing research, scheduling meetings, and iterating with you on multiple drafts. This versatility means you can spend less time drafting emails and more time focusing on being a better, more responsive communicator.

What really sets Shortwave apart from other email AI writing software is our technology. Our advanced AI search infrastructure and cutting-edge AI models enable more accurate, relevant, and natural-sounding emails than ever before. Our Ghostwriter technology ensures that your emails are not only accurate but also reflect your unique writing style and tone of voice, and we use GPT-4o, the fastest and smartest model available, to tie it all together.

1. Instant AI replies

It's often easier to edit a draft than to start with a blank page. Using Instant AI replies, you get a complete draft, written in your voice and tone, in a single click. This feature is particularly useful for those moments when you're stuck and need a little inspiration to get started.

You can streamline replying to emails with instant AI replies by simply selecting one of the three options generated by the AI Assistant and sending the draft, without having to type a single character. Shortwave's AI will craft responses that sound just like you, maintaining your unique voice and tone, so you can enjoy saving precious time since you no longer have to draft each reply from scratch.

2. Writing custom replies with the AI Assistant

Shortwave's conversational assistant is perfect for crafting custom replies when instant AI replies don't capture the nuance of what you want to say. For instance, if you receive an email asking for a detailed project update, you can chat with the AI and type "reply with a revised timeline based on emails with the engineering team" to get a custom draft that you can send in response. This is especially useful for complex or subtle emails where a generic response won't suffice.

One huge advantage of using the AI Assistant to draft a custom reply is that it also allows you to pull in additional data from outside sources, like your calendar. If you don't have your own EA, it can be incredibly tedious to schedule meetings over email. You have to check your calendar, read previous emails for availability, propose times, and iterate to find a solution. Our AI Assistant can handle all of this for you, and even create new events. Just type “reply and suggest a 30-minute meeting tomorrow, propose times I'm free” or highlight a time proposed in a message and click "Schedule with AI".

Now what if you receive a sales inquiry from a new customer in French, but you don't speak the language? Instead of jumping into external translation tools, copying and pasting the original message, drafting a reply in your native language, and then translating it back into French, you can use Shortwave's AI Assistant to handle everything. It can translate the entire email thread and draft a reply in French directly from your inbox.

You can even set a preferred language for the AI Assistant in your settings, or specify precisely the language you want for each draft, allowing you to communicate seamlessly without language barriers (or needing to open Google Translate). Shortwave can translate your emails to and from over 50 languages!

3. Composing a new email with AI

Starting a new email can sometimes be daunting, especially when you're unsure of where to start. Shortwave’s AI Assistant can help by providing relevant information from your email history, saving you from having to dig through old emails and archaic search syntax to find the details you need to craft a well-informed response. This lets you turn a simple thought into a full draft, saving you precious time and eliminating blank page syndrome. For example, you can ask it to "search for emails about [insert project or topic]" and it will provide you with the necessary context to get started. Whether you need to draft a project update or a detailed proposal, Shortwave is the best AI email writer for the task with personalized drafts that sound just like you wrote them from scratch.

You can also enjoy that same time-saving boost by using the AI Assistant as a research tool for general knowledge questions without leaving your inbox. Shortwave has the full power of OpenAI’s GPT-4o, so you can ask it anything you might ask ChatGPT. Having a full-powered AI integrated into your email client means you can stay in your writing flow or continue to iterate on your draft instead of opening dozens of tabs or needing to skim articles for your answers. This is especially useful for fact-checking or quickly looking up statistics, definitions, or historical events.

4. Improving your writing with AI

If you've already written a draft, Shortwave can help you refine your email with AI. The AI Assistant can suggest improvements for clarity, conciseness, or any other custom criteria you specify. It can fix spelling and grammar errors, adjust the email length, and modify the tone to match the desired formality, audience, and goals. It’s like having a personal editor built directly into your inbox.

Beyond just grammar and tone, the AI Assistant can also help you with the content of your emails. Whether you're drafting a legal email and need to ensure correctness, double-checking the details of a real estate deal, or making sure you're asking your doctor the right questions, the AI Assistant can review and enhance your content. It can provide suggestions to ensure your emails are comprehensive and accurate, helping you cover all necessary points and avoid any potential oversights. This makes it an invaluable tool for both personal and professional messages, ensuring your emails are not only well-written but also thorough and error-free.

5. Completing a draft with the AI Assistant

This flow is particularly useful for those moments when you're stuck part-way through a draft and need a little help to wrap up the end of your email or flesh out the beginning. By simply instructing the AI Assistant to "complete my draft," you can get a complete and typo-free email that seamlessly integrates with your initial thoughts.

This saves you from having to wordsmith the rest of your email once you already have the main points of your draft written out. The AI analyzes your writing style and adapts its output according to the tone of your message, ensuring that the final draft sounds just like you, making Shortwave the best AI email writer for anyone looking to improve their email writing efficiency.

6. Writing an email with predictive AI autocomplete

Having the AI complete your draft is such a common use case that we've also built this feature directly into our text editor. Shortwave's predictive AI autocomplete offers inline suggestions as you type, allowing you to complete sentences with just a press of the 'tab' key. If you find yourself typing the same phrases over and over again, this can be an especially big time saver.

For example, you can just start typing "the office wifi password is: " and the AI will instantly fill in the rest. The AI learns from your previous emails, so the suggestions are tailored to your unique style and frequently used phrases. This not only speeds up your email writing process but also reduces the risk of typos and errors.

7. AI forward summaries

Tired of spending tedious time summarizing long email threads for your colleagues to get up to speed? With Shortwave’s AI forward summaries, you can instantly generate concise, intelligent recaps when you forward emails, making catching up a breeze. No more sifting through endless messages—our smart summaries do the heavy lifting for you, ensuring everyone is caught up in seconds.

Elevate your communication, boost your team's productivity, and become your workplace's favorite emailer, as you save colleagues' time and effort.

Your personalized AI email writer

All of Shortwave’s AI email writing features are backed by our cutting-edge AI infrastructure, including our AI-powered search and Ghostwriter personalization. This advanced technology ensures that Shortwave remains the best AI email writer available. Our custom AI retrieval stack offers significant benefits over other AI tools, providing a more personalized and efficient email writing experience.

By integrating AI autocomplete with Shortwave’s custom AI writing style setting, you can further control its behavior.  For example, if you want it to always use your Calendly link, just add an instruction “When proposing meeting times always use this scheduling link: < LINK >”.

Shortwave offers seven powerful ways to use AI for email writing – try them today with your existing Gmail account to supercharge your productivity with AI writing, search, scheduling, and more.