For businesses, particularly when it comes to communication and customer support, a key lesson that can be taken from the COVID-19 pandemic is the increasingly important role artificial intelligence (AI) could play when it comes to business communication.

Of course, this is not to say that AI is perfect (Facebook was forced to delegate a significant portion of its activities to AI due to its staff having limited access to its platform and having to work from home because of COVID-19 — and there have been quite some issues) but the data and results are increasingly pointing to artificial intelligence playing crucial roles in business communications.

Here are five use cases that show how AI is changing business communication:

1. Intelligent automated response: A trend we’re increasingly seeing and that we can expect to see more of when it comes to business communication is that of intelligent automated response. In other words, email responses powered by artificial intelligence.

While we’re already seeing a mix of both complete and partial AI-powered email responses, we can expect to see this trend grow in the near future — and it’s highly likely to be responsible for most email communications.

In what seems to be the most high-profile example of intelligent automated response, Google’s Smart Reply uses machine learning to suggest replies to email messages you get; while this feature is still semi-automated, it has gone on to enjoy wide appeal and was quickly responsible for about 12 percent of mobile replies in Inbox at the time of its release a few years ago — it’s likely to be responsible for a lot more replies now.

We’re likely to see more platforms designed to enable intelligent automated response in the near future, and they’re going to be responsible for a lot more email responses than humans are actually responsible for.