Harvard student creates Chrome extension to humanize AI emails<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nA Harvard student has created a Chrome extension that works unlike every writing tool that came before it, and it may say more about where workplace communication is going than any productivity app released this year.<\/p>\n
Sincerely is an online service that takes high-quality AI text and deliberately distorts it to make it look like it was written by a human hand.<\/p>\n
Sincerely was created by Ben Horwitz using Anthropic’s product Cloud AI. The reason for creating ‘Regards’ was simple but most people can relate to when receiving emails. “I was very upset by the AI \u200b\u200bmess in my inbox,” Horwitz said. TBPN<\/i> podcast. “People will email me; it all looks exactly the same.”<\/p>\n
The extension is free for some initial uses before requiring $4.99 for further use, but according to Horwitz, this product is unlikely to be his main source of income, as he sees it more as a piece of social commentary rather than a tool.<\/p>\n
There are three types of settings provided by Sincerely which are designed according to a particular type of flaw. There is an option called ‘subtle’ where all unnecessary words are removed, some phrases are changed to contractions, and in the first line, a deliberate mistake will be made.<\/p>\n
However, when implementing the above changes Human Mode will make writing conversational. In the third option, called ‘CEO Mode’, the entire message will be written in lowercase, and only the essential information will remain. If the email lacks a signature, “Sent from my iPhone” will still be added.<\/p>\n
Horwitz actually identified something strange about how people are using the tool in practice. “People are copy-pasting; first they’re doing the prompt, then they’re copy-pasting their prompt into the email, and then they’re using ‘Sincerely’ to make their email not look like AI,” he said. “Humans are using AI to make AI more human.”<\/p>\n
That loop prompts, generates, and humanizes represents a communications arms race that no one side of the inbox now fully controls.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n