thunderbird
Smart Email Summaries
Checklist
- [X] I have used the search function to see if someone else has already submitted the same feature request.
- [X] I will describe the problem with as much detail as possible.
- [X] This issue only contains a request for one single feature, not multiple (related) features.
App version
8.0-b5
Problem you are trying to solve
Emails are messy, and the first few lines are a often very poor indicator of the contents of the message. Unlike instant messaging, the content of the notification only serves as a prompt to read further, as opposed to an overview of the content
Compact and default view currrently do not provide a meaningful overview of the contents prior to opening the message. Deciding on the value of the email currently requires clicking and reading all emails, making the inbox more of a to do list than a dashboard from which one can at a glance archive, keep or delete a message.
Suggested solution
Offer users the option to have an LLM parse the content of the email, and create a short digest, providing a more meaningful overview of the message.
Screenshots / Drawings / Technical details
The model chosen should be (in order of importance):
- fast: the model should quickly process incoming messages, allowing for the generated text to appear both in notifications and inbox, without unduely delaying notifications
- low-resources: the use of the LLM preview function should not unduely affect battery life
- lightweight: the model istelf should be reasonably small so as to not unduely impact the install size of thunderbird
- obedient: the model should follow instructions to ensure only a concise preview is returned
- accurate: this is last in the list, as the status quo of preview lines is often useless. anything reasonably relevant would be an improvement
There may be considerations,
- how many of the stored emails to generate previews for
- should a user be able to restrict function to different power-saving settings (charging, standard, battery saver)
- should models be user loaded, or shipped with thunderbird
- should the functionality be local only, or should there be support cloud and self hosted providers
For a minimum viable feature, there should be
- user settings to enable swapping preview lines for digest lines
- user setting to toggle/configure back processing of emails
- user setting to enable swapping in notifications or only in dashboard
- LLM backend to process an email into a digest
Risks involved:
- Inaccuracies: Digest may be incorrect, causing the user to ignore import emails, or give urgency/legitimacy to unimportant or malicious emails
- Feature creep: shipping this feature may create undesired focus on "AI" features, like LLM email co-writing, or LLM-reading, taking valuable focus and time away from valuable core issues
- Ethics and public perception: "AI" is a currently divisive topic. Shipping such a feature may raise discussions on the ethics behind model training, and mozilla/thunderbird's inherent approval thereof
- Future burden: Should legal issues be settled regarding the training or use of LLMs, there may be a requirement to remove or modify parts or all of this feature.
I see a couple of ways how this could work. Primarily it would be a feature under Settings, as its own page, named something like 'AI Assistant'.
After toggling the feature on, two (or three, but could be four) radio buttons should appear in a vertical list which would change what AI model is used. The first radio button would be 'Use on-device model', which can take advantage of the on-device Gemini Nano model through the Google AI Edge SDK, and would work on supported devices.
The second option would be a field asking for an API endpoint to whatever LLM model you'd like, be it self-hosted or served from providers like OpenAI, Ollama (especially if self-hosted, on-device - e.g. Termux, MLC Chat - or on a computer owned by the user).
If a third option is added, in the event that Mozilla creates their own 'Gemini Nano' alternative, or wants to implement a small model themselves, it may be an option as well, besides the on-device model. Note, of course, that the model would still be considerably large (AICore takes ~1.5GBs of storage), so Thunderbird can't ship their own model by default, it would be a separate download from the 'AI Assistant' page if the user decides to use the Mozilla-provided/hosted model.
Alternatively or, if a fourth option is added, it could list 'common' AI models such as GPT-4o, Claude 3, Llama 3.1 or Mixtral in a dropdown that the user could choose from.
It would, regardless, have to check if the device even meets the requirements to run such a model locally, otherwise the on-device/in-app model options would be grayed out informing the user that the device doesn't meet the hardware requirements.
There should be a note at the bottom informing the user that while local models may not collect any data from the e-mails (depending on the model, of course), it's very likely that third-party models accessed through APIs from OpenAI, HuggingFace, etc. may collect and use the data of the e-mails for training purposes, and therefore, to not use this feature on sensitive e-mails.
Hi @CloneMMDDCVII and @alextecplayz. Thank you for the very well thought out ideas, it looks like you've put more than just a little bit of thought into this.
I think this is a great idea, and an easy way to experiment with AI support without going all in on the "Your virtual AI assistant" tagline. I especially like the idea of using the on-device LLM on supported devices. I know there are limitations especially on a phone, which makes using APIs of other AIs lucrative. Personally I'm not very happy about that because it also means that others receiving my emails might add my content to an AI training set. It is hard to avoid these days of course.
We should definitely experiment with some light AI help in 2025. I'd love to immediately turn this into a plan and get started, though right now we're focusing a lot on the release feedback and how we can add more stability to Thunderbird for Android.
It sounds like you know what you are talking about, is this something you'd be interested in building?
@kewisch I work mostly on implenting existing software to fit user needs, product feedback and speccing of work, and my coding abilities are limited to small scale utilitarian scripts rather than user facing features where interoperability, maintanability, security and performance are paramount.
I'd love to test or hunt around for compatible underlying technologies, possibly hack a proof of concept together, but it wouldn't be anywhere close to production code, if it worked at all.
Possibly better to patiently wait for the team to process the recent release feedback and see what not-code I can contribute when the "AI" support discussion has time to pick back up.
--edit just realised I sent this from my other github account. woops
Tbh I think it should just recognize the most important keywords and phrases in the email and include the surrounding text, words such as "work", "changes", "verify", "We've made some changes... You can read them here: " and so on. This couls be done without an LLM and be instead based on how much the word has "weight" compared to other words.
But I wouldn't know if it's lighter or heavier than what LLMs would be. Btw, I think vendor locked in models should not be used nor required for this, such as Gemini models etc since they aren't offered on degoogled devices, which is arguably a big part of Thunderbirds users.