Your Inbox, on Autopilot: Read AI's New 'Digital Twin' Will Answer Your Emails

In late February 2026, productivity startup Read AI moved beyond summarizing meetings and made a bold play for your inbox. The company launched an email-based "digital twin," an AI agent designed to handle routine correspondence directly on a user's behalf.

The feature monitors an inbox, learns a user's patterns and preferences, and then takes action. It can schedule meetings, answer common questions, and triage requests. For now, it focuses on repetitive tasks that typically eat up a knowledge worker's hours. Users can set it to operate in a supervised mode, requiring approval for each drafted reply, or allow it to send certain types of messages autonomously.

CEO David Shim explained the logic to TechCrunch: the twin is built on context Read AI already gathers from meetings, documents, and messages. "The digital twin is the natural extension of that," he said. The company's bet is that an AI trained on an individual's specific work fingerprint will outperform generic assistants.

This push into autonomous email management enters a crowded field. Google and Microsoft have AI drafting tools in Gmail and Outlook, while startups like Lindy AI offer similar services. Read AI argues its advantage comes from broader context—it doesn't just see emails, but also meeting transcripts and project documents, aiming for more nuanced responses.

The launch inevitably raises questions of privacy and trust. Granting an AI access to full email histories and calendars is a significant step. Read AI states it employs encryption and enterprise compliance standards, but the responsibility for the twin's actions remains a key concern for IT departments.

The value proposition is clear: reclaim time lost to communication overhead. If the twin works as intended, it could mark a shift from AI as an assistant to AI as a delegate. Its success, however, hinges entirely on execution and maintaining user confidence in one of the most sensitive areas of professional life.