Google unveiled Smart Reply for Gmail

Google this week unveiled Smart Reply for Gmail on iOS and Android.

It uses machine intelligence and neural networks to suggest up to three possible responses for incoming email, based on the content of those emails.

The system learns from users` responses to suggestions to fine-tune its offerings.

It has a repository of 20,000 Smart Replies that will continue to grow with time, Google spokesperson Emma Ogiemwanye told TechNewsWorld.

"It`s difficult to do anything at all communications-related when you`re traveling," remarked Susan Schreiner, a senior editor/analyst at C4 Trends. "If you can find a quiet corner to do this, it certainly is a way to get a handle on the inbox."

Smart Reply will be available in English in Google Play and Apple`s App Store.

How Smart Reply Works
The Smart Reply system is based on a pair of recurrent neural networks, one of which is used to encode incoming email and the other to predict possible responses.

The encoding network examines incoming emails word by word and produces a list of numbers, known as a vector, that captures the gist of what`s being said.

This vector is independent of syntax. For example, it will come up with similar vectors for the questions "Are you free tomorrow?" and "Does tomorrow work for you?"

The second network takes this thought vector -- which can be thought of as a meme -- and creates a grammatically correct reply one word at a time.

Gmail is using long short-term memory network architecture for the neural networks because it will work even when there are long delays, and it can handle signals with a mix of low- and high-frequency components.

The LSTM architecture homes in on the part of an incoming email that will be most useful in predicting a response.

Google engineers developed a machine learning system for mapping natural language responses to semantic intents. Knowing how semantically similar two responses are lets the system suggest responses that vary in both wording and underlying meaning.

There will be some mistakes at first as the system may fail to interpret memes correctly all the time, but "people will be forgiving because I think they do understand that, for anything, there`s a learning curve," C4 Trends` Schreiner told. -TechNewsWorld