AIVA — The AI Voice Assistant

AIVA is the two-way voice assistant that reads your mail aloud, takes dictation, and runs commands hands-free.

Starting AIVA

Press V anywhere in WonderMail, or click the microphone button in the reading pane toolbar or the composer toolbar. The first time, your browser asks for microphone access — AIVA cannot hear you until you allow it.

A card appears at the bottom of the screen showing whether AIVA is listening, thinking or speaking, what you said, and what it said back. Press Stop on that card, or say "stop", to end the session.

AIVA knows where you are. With an email open it greets you and waits for a command; with nothing selected it offers to search or move you to a box.

What you can say

• "Reply", "Reply all" or "Forward" opens the composer and starts dictation.
• "Read it to me" reads the open email aloud; "Summarise this" gives you the gist.
• "Archive", "Delete", "Park", "Snooze until tomorrow morning" and "Label this Mortgage" act on the open email.
• "Go to Inbox", "Go to Follow-Ups", "Go to Tasks", "Find emails from Leigh" and "Search for rate sheet" move you around.

You do not have to use exact wording. "Write back", "Reply to everyone", "Pass this on", "Read it back to me", "Go ahead and send", "Ship it", "File this away", "Get rid of this", "Park this for later", "Keep it unread", "Remind me tomorrow morning", "Take me to Inbox", "Look for rate sheet", "Thanks" and "Stop listening" all work too.

If AIVA cannot make out what you said, it says so out loud and asks you to repeat it. After two tries in a row it stops listening and tells you to press V again.

Phrases AIVA was never taught

If what you say isn't one of the phrases above, AIVA no longer gives up. It sends what you said to the AI, which works out what you meant: it either runs the matching command, or answers your question using this help guide and your own mail. So "Do I have any unread email?", "Who emailed me today?" and "What does parking do?" all get a real spoken answer.

Anything that changes or removes mail — delete, archive, park, snooze, label, mark unread or send — is confirmed first when the AI had to guess. AIVA asks "Do you want me to delete this email? Say yes or no", and only acts when you say yes. Phrases AIVA already knows still run straight away.

To end the session say "Stop", "Stop listening", "Never mind", "That's all", "We're done", "Thanks" or "Goodbye", press V again, or click Stop on the card.

Pro Tip: every voice action uses the same Undo as the keyboard, so anything AIVA does can be undone.

Spoken summaries of your mail

Say "Summarise unread email" for everything you haven't read in the box you're in, "Summarise all email" for that whole box, or "Summarise everything" for Inbox, Other, Follow-Ups and your 4- and 5-star tasks together. "Summarise since yesterday" covers only what has arrived since yesterday morning.

Say "Summarise tasks" — or "Summarise my to-do list" — for a spoken run-through of your open tasks only, with no email in it.

AIVA reads up to 100 conversations, follows each conversation through its recent replies, skips marketing, newsletters and automated mail, puts the most urgent first, keeps the briefing to about 15 seconds, and ends with the two things to focus on next.

Those two are chosen by deadline and consequence: something due today or overdue, someone blocked waiting on your answer, money, a client or a commitment at stake, or something that cannot be fixed if it slips. Anything purely informational, already answered or waiting on someone else is never picked, and if nothing qualifies AIVA says so.

AIVA also ignores sounds that are not speech — background noise, clicking, coughs, sighs or music — instead of treating them as a command.

While it works, a card in the bottom right shows "Reading up to 100 conversations…", then the full text of what AIVA says, how many conversations it read and how many it skipped.

Say "Say that again" — or "What did you say?", "Come again", "Pardon" or "What was that?" — to hear AIVA's last reply again, whether that was a briefing, a read-aloud or any other answer, without using the AI again. Say "Tell me more about number one" to get the detail on a specific conversation from a briefing.

Say "How do I snooze an email?" — or any other "How do I…" question — and AIVA answers from this help guide.

You can change the wording AIVA uses and the target length in Settings > AI Assistant > AIVA voice summaries. Leave the instructions blank to use the built-in wording.

Admins can see what the app's AI work costs in Settings → Admin → AI usage: totals for today, the last 7 days and the last 30 days, broken down by feature, by model, by day and by heaviest user, with failures and average response time beside each figure.

Right-click an email and choose "Move this email…" to open the Move To menu. It lists mailboxes first, then your starred labels, then every other label; choosing a label files the email under it and archives it. Type in "Find a label..." to narrow the list, scroll it with a mouse wheel, trackpad or touch, and move through it with the arrow keys.

Dictating an email

After AIVA says "Got it. Start dictating", just talk. Say "new paragraph" or "new line" to break the text up, and say "comma", "period", "question mark" and the like to punctuate.

While you dictate, your words appear on the AIVA card as you speak them, and each finished sentence is written into the email as you say it. If the live connection is unavailable, AIVA quietly carries on the way it always has, writing each sentence after you pause.

Say "scratch that" to remove the last sentence, or "delete last word" to remove the last word. Say "stop dictating" to keep the draft and stop talking, or press Esc at any time to turn the assistant off — your draft stays open with everything dictated so far.

Say "I'm done, send this" and the email sends straight away — with the usual undo window, so you can still stop it.

Privacy and portability

Your speech is sent to WonderMail's server, which passes it to the voice provider and returns the words. Your email text is never used to train the voice service, and the voice provider can be swapped without changing how AIVA behaves for you.