Artificial intelligence tools may promise to make your workday easier, but when it comes to email, they could actually create more work. According to Professor Daniel Angus, AI may reduce some of the effort involved in managing your inbox, but it could also encourage more communication rather than less. Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are increasingly being used to draft, summarize and respond to messages. That can certainly save time, but it may also encourage people to send more emails because writing them becomes quicker and easier. It's similar to what happened when email became more widespread. It became much easier to send messages to more people, more often. AI can also make it easier to adjust the tone of a message or turn a short response into something more polished. This could result in your inbox being filled with perfectly written messages that still need to be read, sorted and answered. There's also a social side to writing your own emails that can be lost when you use AI tools. Workplace messages can signal that you're responsive, professional and engaged, with phrases like “just looping you in” or “circling back” helping people navigate office relationships. If AI makes those social cues effortless, we could end up with even more emails that feel important but may not actually require a response.