Read AI is launching Ada, an email-based digital twin that promises to transform how professionals manage their inboxes. The AI assistant can autonomously reply to scheduling requests with your availability, extract answers from company knowledge bases, and pull information from the web - all through natural email conversations. It's the latest salvo in the escalating battle to make AI agents actually useful for everyday work, targeting the hundreds of emails professionals field weekly about meeting times and routine questions.
Read AI just made its biggest product bet yet. The company known for AI-powered meeting notes is launching Ada, an email-based digital twin designed to handle the grunt work that clogs your inbox - and it's going head-to-head with the giants building AI agents.
Ada works by living in your email, where it can field incoming requests about your schedule and fire back responses with your actual availability. No more endless back-and-forth about finding time to meet. The AI pulls from your connected calendar, understands context about conflicts and preferences, and responds like you would - except faster and without the mental overhead.
But scheduling is just the opening act. Ada also taps into company knowledge bases and web search to answer substantive questions. Need to know the status of a project, company policy details, or background on a topic? Ada retrieves and synthesizes that information, positioning itself as more than a calendar bot - it's aiming to be your intelligent proxy.
The timing couldn't be more calculated. Google is embedding Gemini across Gmail and Calendar, Microsoft is pushing Copilot into Outlook, and a wave of startups from Superhuman to Shortwave are racing to make AI email assistants that actually work. Read AI's advantage? It's already sitting in millions of meetings through its transcription product, giving it behavioral data about how professionals actually communicate.
The digital twin framing is deliberate. While competitors pitch AI copilots that assist you, Ada is designed to act independently on your behalf - a subtle but significant shift in how we think about AI agents. It's not waiting for your command; it's monitoring your inbox and jumping in when it can help.
