It is one thing we all do a number of instances every week: We manually add issues to our calendar whereas copying particulars over from an electronic mail. What if a bot may do this be just right for you?
That is the thought behind Fwd2cal, a at the moment free venture by Moe Adham that may parse any electronic mail with an appointment in it and routinely add it to your calendar. For those who get an electronic mail with a possible calendar appointment in it—a celebration invitation, a gathering, a coworker casually mentioning you possibly can be a part of them for drinks after work in the present day—you possibly can ahead it to the free bot. The service makes use of ChatGPT to parse the e-mail and discover the related bits of data, then flip that data right into a calendar appointment, then add that calendar appointment to your Google Calendar.
“I wrote it as a result of I used to be actually annoyed managing many various electronic mail addresses on completely different platforms right into a single calendar,” Adham writes on the venture’s web site. “It additionally appeared like a job that machine studying may possibly do reliably.”
I have been testing this for a pair weeks, and up to now I agree: That is one thing machine studying can do reliably. The service could not be simpler to make use of, and the setup course of is not too tough. All you want to do is ship an electronic mail to calendar@fwd2cal.com. You will get a message again, with a hyperlink, asking you to authorize your Google Calendar. You’ll be able to add extra electronic mail addresses by sending one other electronic mail to the service—simply put “add” adopted by your second electronic mail tackle within the topic line and also you’re finished.
After connecting Fwd2cal to your Google Calendar, you can begin utilizing the service. You’ll be able to ahead any electronic mail mentioning an occasion occurring—the bot will parse the e-mail, flip it right into a calendar appointment, then add it to your Google Calendar. If one thing goes incorrect, you will get an electronic mail explaining that. If not, the service will quietly maintain including appointments to your calendar. You’ll be able to even embody directions within the electronic mail, if you’d like, utilizing the identical phrasing you’d use to speak to any AI chatbot. I’ve discovered the bot is fairly good at determining what you need.
This all requires placing loads of belief in Adham, which he acknowledges on the web site. The excellent news is that the venture is distributed with an open supply license, that means the code is available online if you wish to evaluation it. The privacy policy additionally makes it clear that the one data the bot collects is what’s obligatory to supply the service and that no private data is saved long run or used to coach the AI mannequin. The service runs on a mix of instruments from Google Cloud, OpenAI, and SendGrid.
Fwd2cal is free, although that may change. “If this ever will get too fashionable and it prices an excessive amount of to run, I am going to possibly begin charging for it,” Adham writes on the web site. Within the meantime, it is a service that provides some nice comfort.
