AI-Powered Categorization Launched by Superhuman to Combat Inbox Spam

It's been over two years since ChatGPT made a splash, and it seems like every email app jumped on the AI bandwagon, adding features like AI-powered writing, summaries, and search to help you navigate your inbox faster. Now, Superhuman is tackling one of the biggest headaches in email management: categorization.

Remember Google's Inbox? It tried to sort emails into categories but got the axe in 2019. Since then, other email clients, including Gmail, have taken a crack at it, but the results have been hit or miss.

Enter Superhuman's new Auto Label feature. It automatically slaps labels like marketing, pitch, social, and news on your emails. And if those don't cut it, you can create your own custom labels with a prompt. Superhuman's all about speed, so you can even auto-archive emails under certain labels if you don't need to see them.

Rahul Vohra, Superhuman's CEO, told TechCrunch that their customers were drowning in cold marketing and spam emails. "Why isn't Superhuman filtering these out?" they asked. Initially, Superhuman relied on Gmail and Outlook's spam filters, but that wasn't cutting it. So, they decided to take control with their own classification system.

One hiccup with the auto labels at launch is that you can't tweak the prompts for creating categories. If a prompt isn't working and missing emails you thought would be categorized, you'll have to come up with a new one.

The app also lets you set up a Split Inbox based on your filters, like emails with specific subjects or from certain domains. Now, you can also use your custom labels to create a new Split Inbox.

Superhuman's also sprucing up its reminder feature. You could already snooze emails, but now, if you reply to an email expecting a response, it'll pop back up after a set time if you don't hear back. You can tweak this in the settings. Plus, there's an AI-powered auto-draft feature that crafts a follow-up in your style, keeping the conversation's context and your tone in mind. It's like a polite nudge to the recipient.

With all this info, Superhuman's AI could soon auto-draft replies to emails that need a response and even send some automatically if you're okay with it. For instance, it might reply to a meeting request with a suggested time slot.

Superhuman's also eyeing IFTTT-style (IF This Then That) workflows with prompts. Say you get a recruiting email; you could set up an AI-generated reply template and forward it to the recruiting department if it meets certain criteria.