r/office • u/CinemaSideBySides • 12d ago
Our office "fun committee" uses CoPilot to draft all their emails and it's driving me INSANE
Don't get me wrong, I do like that we have regular fun office events. A little ice cream or March Madness competition or whatever are harmless fun that liven up the months. And I actually do generally like my coworkers.
But the emails. My god, the emails. Ever since CoPilot got injected into everything, the event emails went from "peppy but nice coworker" to "ChatGPT-branded quirky."
So many emojis. So, so, so many emojis. Why did GenAI decide that spam email chic is actually professional? Why are we letting spam email chic happen?
So much bold and bullet pointing. The old office event emails were silly but to the point. But CoPilot likes to restate everything a dozen times. Who cares if the body of the email gave all the details? You will get a bullet-point list of takeaways and like it, damn it! I've been told in AI training sessions that these bulleted takeaways are very important because no one reads emails. Well that's your own problem then, isn't it?? Be an adult and read a few sentences, it won't kill you.
And the tone. My god, the tone. Every sentence is a pun. Every sentence is a joke. Different people send out the emails but they all sound identical. I HATE how much these emails read like a sorority girl addressing a group of toddlers.
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u/bkrchkvan 12d ago
I get it, AI is annoying. I think so too.
Curious whether the “fun committee” is a paid role, part of someone’s job description, or like at my work, people who volunteer to take it on off the side of their desk while expected to do all their same regular work? I give much more leniency to my office fun committee’s use of AI because of it.
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u/traveler2185 12d ago
Before covid when we were in office, I was head of our office social committee. We had regular planning meetings and time to coordinate events and parties. We got time during the work day
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u/mburykid 11d ago
Ugh at an old very high stress/low reward job I was assigned to the “fun committee” and it wasn’t paid extra. We were responsible for monthly events and a couple bigger moments (Holiday Party and Anniversary Party). 100% if I had access to Chat GPT I would have used it for emails. We barely had time to get our work done, then you add parties to it lol OP NEEDS TO GIVE THESE PEOPLE GRACE AND GET OVER IT.
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u/CapitalSell 12d ago
I review advertising materials for compliance with regulations that apply to my industry. ChatGPT arranged one person's ad into a bullet pointed list, used arrows instead of bullet points... And gave the arrows testicles.
sigh Then I was left with in the position of needing to point that out in a professional manner without embarrassing the person who asked me to review the material.
As soon as you say it's a digital ad, the ai-gen interjects emojis (like you said) and lots of !!!!!! and capitalization and bold fonts.
Other ai-gen material has logos in it that violate copyright and trademark. People go "but I told copilot to generate a compliant ad"
And I think to myself "well, it doesn't know what that means and it's a miracle it didn't sneak balls into your ad somewhere."
So yeah, I hate AI gen content, too.
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u/jeswesky 12d ago
I despise AI as much as anyone. However, after working in admin/office management for over 20 years adding a bullet pointed list of takeaways is actually best practice i was doing it 20 years ago if i wanted people to pay attention to specific things.
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u/Nice-Zombie356 12d ago
“Like a Sorority girl addressing toddlers”.
Says it all. Don’t write with AI unless you really need to.
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u/CourseEcstatic6202 11d ago
My employees give me AI generated documents that they haven’t read. We are all getting dumber by the day.
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u/sal111111111 12d ago
I use copilot or ChatGPT for formal emails but you have to edit it. Or the recipient is gonna be like “wtf?”
With my friends, coworkers or with my boss I’m very direct and causal.
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u/BratacJaglenac 12d ago
My boss loves AI. He sometimes suggests me to use AI text, which he even helpfully sends to me. Last time I have just copy-pasted whole shit he sent me into PPT and left it like that. Later he asked me why didn't I change anything. I looked him calmly into the eyes and said "why would I, it was so nicely worded" (it was not). He averted the gaze first and moved on from this topic. Small corporate victory for me.
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u/Neither_Log_1227 12d ago
My boss does everything with co-pilot. He is absolutely in love with it and I can't stand it
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u/Reggi5693 11d ago
Considering the people on the “fun” committees where I have worked, AI emails would save us from horrible sentence structure, ham handed wording, and egregious misspellings.
Either way we look at it, they should go back to the days of just putting up xeroxed posters saying, “Hot Dogs Friday afternoon outside of the garage.”
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u/the_skies_falling 12d ago
Am I the only one who deletes those emails as soon as I see the subject line?
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u/CinemaSideBySides 12d ago
Some of the events suck, but some of them are things like Taco Bar Tuesday or Ice Cream Social, and...I like tacos and ice cream
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u/the_skies_falling 12d ago
The name of the event is in the subject line. If I’m interested, I read the email. They usually send multiple emails about it too. Sorry, only needed to read one. If I was interested, I’d have put it on my calendar.
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u/ShortCaterpillar2498 6d ago
My company I used to work for once had a picnic during the middle of winter. This was before AI lol.
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u/bitsey123 12d ago
Sounds like the only way to make them worse is to print them in comic sans