The reply companion
Experimental. The companion is new. How it drafts, and the number of drafts each plan includes, may change while it settles. It is open to every account on every plan; on Free it starts once the account has sent or received 20 messages.
The reply companion drafts answers to your mail. Open a thread, choose Draft with AI, and a panel opens beside the thread with a reply written in your voice. It reads the thread, the customer's card and notes, and what it has been told about your business. When it lacks a fact it asks you instead of making one up. Nothing it writes reaches the customer unless a person sends it.
Switching it on
The companion is off until an owner or admin of the account switches it on, once, for the whole account. Go to Settings → AI and read the card Switch on the reply companion. It says what happens: when someone asks for a draft, the thread, the customer's card and the notes kept by the companion are sent to an AI model, which writes the draft. The model's provider does not train on this data. Nothing is sent until someone asks.
Once it is on, the card shows who switched it on and when, and everyone on the team can ask for drafts. Members who open the page before then are told to ask an owner or admin. An owner or admin can switch it off at any time from the same card; nothing is sent after that.
Drafting a reply
- Open a conversation and choose Draft with AI in the bar at the foot of the thread.
- The panel opens on the right. You can say what the reply should do (optional), then choose Draft a reply.
- The draft appears in the panel. If the companion needs something only you know, it says so under Before it can finish, tell it:. Type the answer and choose Answer and draft again.
- Use this draft puts the text in the ordinary reply window, where you edit it, add attachments and send it as any other reply. Discard throws it away.
The draft is never sent by the companion. The reply window is the same one you use without it, and the send button in it is the only way the text leaves.
What it remembers
Below a draft, under Worth remembering?, the companion may propose a line it would like to keep for next time. Each proposal is one of three kinds:
| Kind | Example | Who it is read for | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your business | What you sell, how you answer, your policies. | Every draft on the account. | Settings → AI, About your business. Everyone on the account sees and edits this list. |
| This customer | "Their finance system cannot follow links: send invoices as PDF." | Drafts to that person. | The customer panel beside the thread, under What it knows about them. |
| You | How you like to write: greeting, length, sign-off. | Only your own drafts. | Settings → AI, Your voice. Nobody else sees this list. |
Nothing is remembered until you choose Remember on a proposal. You can also add lines by hand in both lists on Settings → AI, and remove any line there or in the customer panel. The companion also reads the notes you keep on a contact's page, so a line there about who the person is or what they expect makes its drafts fit better.
How much AI a month
Drafts, drafts made again after you answer a question, and rewrites of a selection in the compose window all draw on one monthly amount of AI, measured by the work each one takes: a long thread uses more than a short one. The allowance is per account and resets each calendar month.
| Free | Plus | Pro | Scale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI companion / month | Included | 3× Free | 10× Free | 33× Free |
On Free, the companion starts once the account has sent or received 20 messages; until then the panel shows how many it has so far. The panel and Settings → AI show the percentage used this month; at 100% the companion waits for the next month or a larger plan. These amounts are part of the experiment and may change. See Analytics, plans and billing for everything else a plan includes.
Privacy
Nothing is sent to the AI model until someone on your account asks for a draft. Then the thread being answered, the customer's card and notes, and the lines the companion has been told to remember are sent to produce that one draft. The model's provider does not use it to train models. The privacy policy names the provider and says where the data is processed. Mail you do not ask it about is never sent, and switching the companion off stops all of it.