Perplexity launches an AI assistant for email

Perplexity launches Email Assistant, an AI assistant that connects to your email to draft replies, organize messages, and coordinate meetings. For now, the feature is available exclusively to Perplexity Max subscribers.

The assistant works with Gmail and Outlook accounts, both on mobile and desktop. Rather than simply summarizing messages, it can help turn them into concrete tasks: replying, finding information, suggesting times, or identifying what needs attention.

What it can do for you

Email Assistant learns your communication preferences and the types of messages you usually prioritize. With that information, it can:

• Draft replies for you to review and send.
• Organize your inbox with labels such as completed or pending messages.
• Suggest meeting times based on your habits and availability.
• Summarize conversations about a specific topic.
• Detect urgent messages from a team, client, or project.

You can also ask it directly about your inbox. For example: “Which emails should concern me before the board meeting?” or “Summarize all messages about the fourth-quarter budget.”

Meeting coordination aims to eliminate one of email’s most tedious processes: multiple rounds of messages to find a time. You can CC the assistant on a conversation and let it suggest options based on your preferences. You still remain in control before a reply is sent.

An assistant inside your email, not another app

To get started, Max subscribers must register through the Email Assistant hub and connect their account. They can then email assistant@perplexity.com from their own account to make a request.

The difference from a traditional search feature is that the assistant can answer open-ended questions about your inbox. You do not need to know which filter or rule to create: you can ask it to find what matters and explain why.

Perplexity also says the service meets the requirements of SOC 2 and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR. The company also says it does not use user data to train its models. Even so, connecting an assistant to your email means giving it access to conversations, contacts, and documents, so it is worth reviewing the permissions before activating it.

Perplexity’s bet on personal assistants

The company links this launch to the adoption of its assistants for Comet, its browser. According to Perplexity’s initial data, those assistants multiply the number of questions and tasks users complete each day by 3 to 18 times. The figure applies to Comet assistants, not to a result already demonstrated by Email Assistant.

For you, the most practical change is moving from reviewing hundreds of messages to asking for a specific answer: what to handle first, what to summarize, or what to reply to. The question will be whether the assistant understands the context and tone well enough without making you correct every draft. For now, limited access to Perplexity Max also makes this a controlled test, not a tool available to everyone.