Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Gmail for Android is working on a voice input feature for AI prompts.
- Instead of typing out a prompt, users will be able to speak out the prompt.
- AI will then use this prompt to draft an email for you.
Gmail is one of the best email apps on Android. While a lot of credit goes to the fact that it is preloaded on a massive chunk of Android phones sold globally, good credit also goes to the app, which is quite good. Google is upgrading the Gmail experience with the new Help Me Write functionality, which uses AI to help you quickly draft emails. Users have to input written prompts for the AI to work with, but in the future, this could possibly be done through voice instead.
TheSpAndroid has activated an upcoming Gmail app feature that lets you “draft an email with your voice.” You can speak out your prompts, and the AI built into the Gmail app will follow it to draft an email. Here are some screenshots of the function in action, activated through test flags:
The Draft Email with Voice feature within Gmail is similar to voice-based functions on keyboard apps, but it appears to have a few key differences. For one, this feature is integrated within the Gmail app itself, so you can use it irrespective of whether your keyboard app accepts voice input. Two, this doesn’t appear to be simple voice dictation. Voice is used to enter the prompt, which the AI then uses to draft out the email; this is a feature that most keyboard apps will not offer.
With this feature, the voice typing interface automatically opens a big mic button when you begin writing a new email or reply to an email. You can tap on it to start recording the prompt. Once done, tap on the “Create” feature to use AI to draft the email. If you exit the interface, a chip will appear on the email screen, letting you return to the feature.
It is unclear when Google will roll out this feature to Gmail for Android. Currently, Help Me Write is restricted to Google Workspace Labs users in the US and works only in English. We presume that the Draft Email with Voice feature will roll out to this subset of Gmail users first and then to more users, once Help Me Write also rolls out to them.
