AI Is In our Inbox, But Should You Use It?

Hello,

This is Simon with the latest edition of The Weekly. In these updates, I share key AI related stories from this week's news, list upcoming events, and share any longer form articles posted on the website.

At work this week, I noticed a new icon in my Gmail. It turned out to be access to Google AI Studio, one of Google's newer tools, available alongside the Gemini features that have been there for a while now.

Studio lets you create automated workflows, things like "Notify me about emails from key people" or "Auto-add email attachments to Drive". In a world that feels increasingly hectic, these are genuinely useful. I've already set a couple up, and my favourite sends me an email 30 minutes before every meeting with a summarised brief pulled from all the relevant past correspondence. It's already saving me time.

However, not every AI feature Google has added recently hits the mark. In my email list, I now regularly see a "Suggested reply", where Google has proactively written a response on my behalf. I've yet to use a single one. They tend to be too short and generic, and not remotely close to my more conversational style. Given this is my work email, that matters.

I understand Microsoft is moving just as quickly, embedding AI features across its 365 tools under the Copilot brand.

So we now have enormous AI capability built directly into the tools we already use every day — and that's genuinely exciting. But my two Google examples highlight something important: just because AI is built in and easy to access doesn't mean you should switch your brain off. Some of it is brilliant. Some of it isn't quite there yet. The lesson? Being surrounded by AI features isn't the same as benefiting from them.

Have you noticed more and more AI appearing in your work systems? Are you using it, or still holding off for now?

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In this section, I’m going to bring to you a real world example of AI use. This week, we look at how irrigation company Rachio used AI to improve systems and save costs.

A House of Lords committee said the UK should favour a “licensing-first” model for using copyrighted material in AI training, rather than letting AI developers train on protected works by default and asking creators to opt out later. 

Why it matters: Businesses should expect AI procurement and policy conversations to move beyond “can we use this?” toward “was this trained responsibly?” That has implications for vendor choice, reputational risk, and how comfortable companies feel embedding AI into customer-facing work.

An ECB blog argued that, so far, growing AI adoption in the euro zone may be creating some jobs rather than simply destroying them. The piece lands at a time when many companies are trying to balance efficiency gains with concern about displacement. 

Why it matters: This is a helpful counterweight to the usual fear narrative. For business readers, the more realistic near-term story may be job redesign, re-skilling, and changed hiring patterns rather than immediate mass replacement.

Microsoft said it is bringing Anthropic’s technology into Microsoft 365 Copilot through a new tool called Copilot Cowork, aimed at more autonomous “agent” style work. It will sit inside the existing M365 Copilot offering and is designed with enterprise security and data controls in mind. 

Why it matters: This is another sign that AI is moving from chatbots and assistants toward tools that can carry out multi-step work. For non-technical business teams, that means the next wave of AI value may come less from drafting text and more from automating workflows.

Thanks for reading, and see you next Thursday.

Simon,

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