Let me tell you a story

I go to check my email in Gmail’s web UI. I see a few new messages regarding feedback on a project I’m working on. I click through to read one of them and the first thing I’m greeted with is a message summary I didn’t ask for generated by a language model.

I focus the message box to draft a reply, but there’s already one there. It was also generated by the language model. I delete it, replacing it with my own.

Afterward, I go to compose a new message. A colorful animation steals my focus for a second highlighting a new “help me write” button. I ignore it and move on to filling in the recipients and subject line.

I focus the message body area and underneath my cursor appears the message “Press / for Help me write”. Again, I ignore it and begin writing.

A few moments later, I start a new paragraph and pause. There’s a new message under my cursor now: “Tab to improve”. What I’ve written so far isn’t up to Gmail’s standards, it seems.

What message are you trying to send?

Look, I’m pretty pragmatic when it comes to generative AI features in software. I see very little wrong with including an optional AI writing assistant for those who want it.

But when you nag and nag, when you summarize my messages and write my replies without my asking, when you repeatedly interrupt me to beg and plead that I rewrite my drafts, you’re sending the wrong message.

The message you’re sending is that you think I’m not capable of reading and writing my own emails. That the people I’m exchanging messages with don’t deserve my time and energy. That I’m doing something wrong by not outsourcing my communication skills to a token prediction machine.

I’ve looked into it. Some of these features can be turned off. Others can’t. Or if they can, it means also turning off useful long-standing features like automatic thread categorization. I have very little doubt that this is intentional, that the unsolicited summaries and auto replies are a means of artificially inflating the usage metrics for the language model features.

I think we’re all used to user-hostile software these days, but this is the first time I’ve experienced software that feels like it’s actively trying to be disrespectful. Sure, I could switch to a different mail client and never see any of these language model features, but my experience these past months has left such a bad taste that all I’m looking for now is a clean break.

A 16 year breakup

I’ve had my Gmail account for 16 years. It’s by far my oldest internet account that I still use. Or used to use. I’ve already started the long process of moving away.

This time I’m doing things the right way by connecting my own domain to a mail host. I’m currently with Fastmail since they were by far the most popular option when I asked for suggestions on the fediverse. I’m still early on in the trial period, but so far first impressions are great. It seems really flexible, and after connecting multiple domains and setting up a few aliases I’m starting to wish I had tried it sooner.

I haven’t settled on whether or not I should import my Gmail data. I’ll almost surely import my contacts, but there’s something nice about starting fresh as far as everything else goes. I’m interested in what other people in a similar position have done.

Congrats to Google, really. They’ve done a decent job at keeping Gmail stable over the many years I’ve used it. Which is why even I am impressed by how quickly they were able to get me to pack up and leave.

— JP