Gmail’s polarizing Smart Replies will soon be optional for desktop users

Google plans to give desktop users the ability to turn off Gmail’s new Smart Replies in the coming weeks, the Wall Street Journal reports. The feature, which arrived alongside the service’s recent redesign, attempts to provide short phrases which you can use to automatically respond to emails, but has faced criticism for suggesting some inappropriate responses. The redesign is set to become the default for all 1.4 billion of Gmail’s active accounts next month, after its rollout started back in April. Although Google has said that it’s manually tweaked its algorithm to remove the most inappropriate Smart Reply responses (an earlier version of the software would reportedly respond using both “Sent from my iPhone” and “I love you” with... Continue reading…