Astro, an artificial intelligence (AI) company, said it is the first to offer in-app voice control capabilities for their Android and iOS email app, which allows users to read and manage their communications hands-free.

Astrobot Voice is the first voice assistant dedicated to email. It made its debut on the Amazon Echo in June and can be employed while users are, for instance, driving or cooking.

“At Astro, we’re bringing AI to email, and a big part of that is using natural language processing and voice to improve how you interact with your inbox,” the company stated.

Astro launched earlier this year with more than $8 million in Series A funding, and recently announced a Slack integration.

The company cited a study by a Stanford University computer scientist which found speech recognition is now about three times as fast, on average, as typing on a cell phone. The error rate, once 8.5 per cent, has dropped to 4.9 per cent.

Users can pose questions, for example about new or unread emails, or command the service to read, delete, archive, highlight and mark messages as unread. Astrobot Voice also enables users to dictate emails, which it reads back to confirm the accuracy before sending.

Astro said it will continue to add more commands in the future.