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Guide

How to write email replies with AI in Gmail

Every route to an AI-written reply in Gmail makes a different trade between effort, cost, and how much of your mailbox leaves the building. Here are the four that actually work.

What Gmail gives you, and the copy-paste workaround

  1. 1Smart Reply offers three short canned answers under a message. Free, instant, and useless for anything longer than "Thanks, sounds good".
  2. 2Smart Compose finishes sentences as you type. Good for speed, no help with what to actually say.
  3. 3Gemini in Gmail drafts a whole reply, on a paid Google Workspace or Google AI plan. It is the strongest built-in option.
  4. 4The common workaround: copy the thread, paste it into ChatGPT or Claude, ask for a reply, paste the answer back.

Where it gets tiring. The copy-paste route is free and flexible, and it has a real cost people skip past: you are pasting the contents of a client's email into a separate consumer product, one thread at a time. It is also four manual steps per reply, which is why almost nobody keeps it up past the first week.

With MailGeni

A draft that is already there when you open the email

  1. 1Open any email in Gmail or Outlook. The MailGeni panel opens with a reply already drafted from the thread — not a blank box waiting for a prompt.
  2. 2Pick your answer: Accept, Decline, Need more info, or Defer. The draft rewrites around that decision.
  3. 3Pick the mood: Warm, Direct, Formal, Firm, Brief, Apologetic, Grateful or Playful. Decline plus Warm is a no that keeps the relationship; Decline plus Firm is a no that ends the thread.
  4. 4Your sign-off and footer go on automatically. Edit anything you like, then send from Gmail as normal.

It writes from the thread and from how you have written before, so the result reads like you rather than like a chatbot. The usual AI tells are stripped out — nothing MailGeni sends you will open with "Thank you for reaching out".

Get started (free)On the Free, then Pro plan · 14-day trial, no card

Questions people ask

What does it cost?
The free plan gives you 10 AI actions a month after a 14-day trial. Pro is unlimited, from £8/month billed yearly (£12 month to month). One email you open is one action for the day, however many times you reopen it.
Does it work in Outlook too?
Yes. The same panel, the same drafting, in Outlook on the web. There is no Gmail-only gate on any plan.
Can it reply in a language other than English?
Yes — it follows the language of the thread, and can translate an incoming message so you can read it before you answer.

Checked on 15 September 2026.

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