Email is precisely the area in which I’d like to see AI. No, I don’t want a bunch of bulls**t cookbooks written by an AI that tell me to eat glue. And no, I don’t want to read that novel that AI manufactured, because every piece of “literature” I’ve seen AI write has been derivative crap.

But email is the kind of soul-sucking, time-munching task that I’d happily offload to the bodyless robot ghost of AI. Perplexity AI, my current favorite AI, launched Email Assistant on September 22, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: an AI helper for the mundane daily tasks of managing an overflowing inbox.

I don’t need it to write Chaucer. I need it to keep me from drowning in the digital deep end.

It’s not for everyone… yet

Email Assistant already offers to summarize messages, which is a fairly common (and vital) skill among AI-infused email clients. You can also ask questions such as “What should I prioritize before my meeting this afternoon?” and Email Assistant will give you what (it thinks) is your top priority task.

It also “learns your communication style and priorities,” as Perplexity AI says. “It drafts responses matching your tone and suggests meeting times based on your calendar preferences, saving time on routine tasks.”

There’s an angle. There’s always an angle. Like Comet, Perplexity AI’s Email Assistant is initially launching only to Perplexity Max subscribers who pay $200 per month. That means only a fraction of Perplexity users will get to experience it yet.

Those who wallow in the free tier or the $20-per-month Pro tier will have to wait for Email Assistant to trickle down to those tiers. However, given that this is precisely what has begun to happen with Comet, I expect we’ll all get to use it soon enough, regardless of whether we’re Max subscribers or not.