Your morning cup of coffee might soon share the table with your phone, typo-free emails, and perfectly timed messages. A recently filed patent by Grammarly, best known for their advanced text-correction tool Grammarly Premium, describes a program that predicts the best time to send messages. This innovative feature could change the way we communicate by adding precision and efficiency to our digital conversations.
Nestled in the technical details of patent number US11727205B1, the magic of this feature is revealed: This so-called “smart helper” could predict when our recipients are most likely to receive — and respond to — our messages, and then suggest these optimal send-times to us.
Presently, digital writing assistants are mostly limited to identifying and suggesting fixes for spelling or grammar errors, as the patent’s illustrative Figure 1 depicts. However, this new patent hints at an exciting future where such assistants play a more active role in our communication efforts.
The proposed smart helper would do more than just refine our language: It could, according to the patent, leverage machine and deep learning techniques to summarize long messages or documents for quick preview. Hence, this tool might transform how we consume lengthy emails and documents by making it easier to grasp their content.
While details remain sparse, the figures included in the patent application suggest that the tool may provide insights and recommendations for improving productivity and the effectiveness of communication. After all, the daily churn of digital communication — from emails and texts to instant messages and social media posts — can be overwhelming, and carefully timed messages could reduce the chaos.
The tool also has potential beyond text. It could aid in optimizing audio-visual communication and might even have applications with augmented reality glasses. This aligns with the broader trend of incorporating AI and machine learning elements into our everyday tasks and interactions, suggesting that technology might get better at anticipating our needs and enhancing our efficiency.
A key point to mention, though, is that Grammarly’s smart helper feature is, for now, just a patent. Patents are the plants in technology’s garden, some of which will bloom into products while others stay as concepts. Therefore, while this application is indicative of Grammarly's direction, we can’t yet be certain whether we'll see it materialize in future updates of Grammarly Premium.
Exciting though the idea is, the eventual release of the smart helper feature depends on several factors, including feasibility, cost, and user interest. In any case, for those of us who make a living in the digital sphere, the prospect of knowing when our messages are most likely to hit home is nothing less than tantalizing.