Google makes email smart enough to answer for you

Amit Singh, president of Google for Work, speaks at Web Summit 2015. DUBLIN -- Google doesn't presume to know what you're thinking, but the Internet giant will offer its best guess with a new email feature called "smart reply." Unveiled Tuesday, the smart-reply feature in the Inbox by Gmail app analyzes the text of incoming email and offers three tailored responses that you can ignore or customize. Smart reply should arrive this week in the version of the Inbox app that runs on smartphones and tablets powered by Google's Android software and Apple's rival iOS. It may look simple, but under the covers, the capability requires complex technology called deep learning, a newer incarnation of what researchers for decades have called artificial intelligence.