this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
436 points (98.4% liked)

Open Source

35460 readers
351 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] arotrios@lemmy.world 79 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Ok, this part is pretty cool:

Thunderbird Assist will also be available. This experimental feature, developed in collaboration with Flower AI, offers optional artificial intelligence functionalities for users who want them while also addressing privacy concerns head-on. On devices robust enough to handle AI models locally, Thunderbird Assist processes everything on the user’s own machine.

However, for users on less powerful hardware, the development team has integrated NVIDIA’s confidential computing to keep any remote processing secure. Rest assured, those who prefer to skip AI services can continue using Thunderbird without these extras.

I've been unwilling to touch cloud based AI, much less expose my emails to it as there's no guarantee of privacy, but being able to run a local model allows you the functionality without the risk. Haven't used Thunderbird in years, but this is tempting me to give it another shot.

[–] Montagge@lemmy.zip 33 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Why on earth would I want AI integrated in my email?

[–] unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 4 points 19 hours ago

Eh. You might not, but the "normies" might. Expanding the userbase is always a good idea for open source projects.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 18 hours ago

I would love a daily digest if it was actually trustworthy.

[–] BussyCat@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

“AI” or as they were called for the longest time machine learning algorithms can do things like spell check and help with grammar.

The more modern algorithms that they started really calling AI can help format your ideas, can fix sentence structure, and can even translate into foreign languages

Email is probably the most useful place for AI as most of the ones we talk about today are really good at language formatting but don’t really have any intelligence

For example you can write an email cursing out your boss saying “as I fucking told you yesterday” and then ask the AI to rewrite your email in a professional tone so that it says “per my previous email” like sure you can obviously do that yourself but it’s a lot faster to word vomit your thoughts into a computer especially when it’s trivial work related garbage and save your mental energy for your personal time

[–] Montagge@lemmy.zip 17 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Trying real hard not to be old man yelling at clouds, but have things gotten so bad people can no longer write a simple email without help with sentence structure?

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I'm a software developer, not a writer or a salesperson, but I have to do sales to sell my software.

I can write a first draft of a sales email to get my ideas across and then have the AI look at it from a specific perspective I don't have the skills in.

I dont just take whatever it says and hit send though, I have a conversation with it to tweak things i don't like, remove things that I don't think are needed or add things it missed.

Do this for 15 to 20 minutes and I end up with a much more polished email that won't come across as AI slop with all the personal touches I did want to add.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Just a question on the value of time: If you can't be bothered to write it, why should anyone bother to read it? Is it really that valuable of a message?

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I do write something, and then work to refine it. Like I said, I spent 15 to 20 minutes on it after writing it.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] pheet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Probably benefits grow when you shift from simple emails to more complex ones. If you have to send quite a few emails per day and if you can do that quicker and/or better then there’s benefit in using the tools.

After all someone came up with an idea to do away something as simple as us writing ’BR, my name, my company’ in the end of the email - and pretty sure no one would give up that simple feature.

[–] Pirata@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We probably never sent as many emails as we do today, and there are bigger priorities. Wanna blame someone, blame the overly pompous corporate world.

[–] Montagge@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Well I can't wait for AI to write an email for a coworker that's full of misinformation. I can't wait to waste my time with that!

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] BussyCat@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

Just about everyone can use help with sentence structure, like can you convey your point without help? Sure, but your point can be conveyed clearer and with less effort on your part.

It’s like the benefit of autocorrect you can reread your whole email a few times and double check a few questionable words to make sure everything is spelled perfectly or we can have this integrated tool that highlights words that should be fixed and lets you quickly fix those words.

For bullshit corporate emails I personally see very little negative in using a chatbot to make your words sound more professional besides just more of a brain rot

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 30 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Do you want a serious answer or are you just being flippant?

[–] johannes@lemmy.jhjacobs.nl 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, i'm interested in a serious answer?

[–] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 34 points 1 day ago (15 children)

Summary, auto-correct, translation, text-to-speech, speech-to-text

[–] LedzMx@lemmy.ml 3 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Perhaps for native speakers this AI systems might not offer an much of an edge, but it does to those that have it as a second language. I know sometimes what I wrote doesn't have the best structure, so running it in a filter like this helps a lot without changing the intended purpose

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] Montagge@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Serious. I can't think of what good slapping AI in there does. Is speech to text that's existed for decades considered a LLM and therefore AI?

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Other guy covered it decently. I think it’s also remember to have a little bit of humility and remember that just because you don’t have a use for something doesn’t mean others don’t either. In addition, just because you can’t think of a use for something doesn’t mean there isn’t any. I say this as a huge critic of AI/LLM’s and how they’ve been deployed.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 2 points 23 hours ago

I think I'd be pretty pleased with that actually, so long as it's on my local machine. That's because I often find myself wanting to locate a particular email that is along certain lines, or on a certain topic, or involves an organisation's name that kinda sounds similar to this one word but isn't actually that word or things like "the email where they mention they've had a kid" but I can't actually recall either what they called their child, or what gender they were, or when the email was received. Or actually, even better, in that last example "What's Dave's kid's name again?" and just getting a 1 word, correct response, with the ability to open the email it found where this was mentioned for additional context if I want it. Or things like "how long has it been since we moved out of that house?" and instead of finding the earliest email I can on the topic of moving house and reading emails to surmise when we discussed leaving and then finding which one might have mentioned that actual date we moved out, I could just get an answer, in English again hopefully with a link to the email or emails that provided the rationale for how the answer was arrived at.

Often in those simpler search situations I mentioned where I just need to find a specific email, keyword searches don't always cut it. I have an absolutely appalling memory so figuring out pertinent details to things happening now based on what was going on in my inbox at some point in the past are a very important way that I get by. If I could achieve this more easily by asking relatively vague, English language questions that will help direct search efforts that are being done for me would be really helpful. Sure, theoretically all existing means of filtering and searching email should eventually find me that message but they'd likely be more effort than just asking directly like you'd ask a person tasked with digging through a filing cabinet for you, and sometimes even after extensive filtering by all kinds of clues: date, senders, keywords, labels, subject lines, emails I remember around the same time that I can find; I just for whatever reason can NOT dig up that email only to discover it later when it's too late to be useful to me anymore and get to see what obscure reason it was none of my clever search methods caught it..

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago (4 children)

They don’t list which stolen data Flower Ai was trained on. Ai slop is Ai slop and will only lead to less critical thinking from the general population: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf

[–] arotrios@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Your points are valid, but I look at AI as an unavoidable trend in the tech space, which is why I experiment with local models. I'd rather understand how they work (and how to protect oneself from them) as I believe avoiding them isn't really possible in my field.

Thus far, the local models I've worked with have gotten a C- on coding, but an A+ on bullshit. I think the tech still has a long way to go before it lives up to the hype, both negative and positive.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Thus far, the local models I've worked with have gotten a C- on coding, but an A+ on bullshit.

I work at a company that won't allow us to use a search engine but has a local model we're allowed to use, and this is a pretty apt summary.

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 day ago

s/chatgpt/journalists/ too.

[–] CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How do you get anything done at all??

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Ugurcan@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What’s that NVIDIA’s confidential computing?