I guess I just don't get the hate. A large portion of my communication is all about getting the intent across without any need to be a wordsmith. If that can be

I guess I just don't get the hate. A large portion of my communication is all about getting the intent across without any need to be a wordsmith. If that can be automated, why not? If someone sends me a picture of their cute dog, I'll happily acknowledge it. But I don't see the difference between picking a somewhat simple, canned response over writing essentially that same thing out myself. It's about acknowledging that you received their picture and agreeing that it is cute. There are many things where automating stuff feels wrong. But most of these involve some kind of manipulation: help with writing a sweet message to your lover, optimizing your email response to the particular personality of the person you're talking to so that they'll 'like it more'. Stuff like that. But automating away things that are kind of inane to begin with doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. It's no different from the 'hello how are you' and 'how was your weekend' talk. It's not quite pointless (in my view), but it's also not something so authentic that any protocol or automation in the matter is a bad thing (in fact, we already do this).