What is Red Ink?
It is an add-in for Microsoft Office on Windows that allows you to access your preferred large language model (LLM) directly within Word, Excel and Outlook, enabling you to use the power of AI in a variety of ways in your daily work:
- You can select a text or cells in your worksheet and have the content translated, corrected or improved.
- You can have summaries created, automatically abbreviate or anonymise text, or ask the AI to comment on your document according to your specifications (using Word comments/bubbles) or to analyse specific revisions to your document (‘What did the other side summarise and change?’).
- There is a context search (a search for ‘liability’, for example, not only finds ‘liability’ but also related passages such as ‘we are not liable’), a chatbot integrated into Word (which can also edit your text directly if you wish) and live transcription and dictation are also possible (with post-processing by the AI).
- You can write free prompts or access a prompt library with complex prompts, you can combine external documents with your own text (including searchable PDFs), you can link a small text database, you can have the AI create formulas and content for cells in Excel (‘Insert the formulas for a linear regression for the following case:...’) ) or have it filled in (‘Complete C10:C20 with suggestions for answers to the questions in B10:B20 based on the use case in C9’) or have a long e-mail chain summarised in Outlook before you reply to it.
- If suggestions for changes are made, you can also receive these as markup – not only in Word, but also in Outlook, although Outlook does not actually support this.
- There is a browser extension so that you can use Red Ink in your Chromium-based browser (Edge, Chrome) (e.g. to search the content of webpages or PDFs using AI) or to translate or correct texts that you are supposed to fill out in a form.
- You can have your texts converted into audiobooks and podcasts, similar to Google's NotebookLM function (this requires a Google Cloud Platform account, though).
Unlike some other offerings, Red Ink allows you to freely choose the AI provider you want to work with. If you don't trust any of these providers or they don't offer you the necessary assurances, you can also configure Red Ink to use a self-hosted LLM. The source code is open, and we have no access to your data. We don't want that either, because we originally developed the tool for ourselves. For the time being, we provide the tool for free. Since API access is also very cheap today, this solution is much less expensive to use for such applications than some other offers.
Access occurs via a tile in the menu ribbon (and, depending on the configuration in Word and Excel, via the context menu or shortcuts; see the screenshot on the right). Various functions are already predefined, such as translating, abbreviating or correcting texts or summarising an email-chain. However, with ‘Freestyle’ you can enter any prompts you like, which are then applied to the selected text. You can also store a library of prompts and there are numerous options and configuration possibilities, e.g. the possibility of having the AI comment on the markup of the latest contract version you have received, merging two texts, accessing a library or the internet, or have a text revised or commented on using Word 'bubbles'. All this can be done directly from Word, Excel and Outlook, so there is no need to copy and paste between two windows.
Here is a demo video that shows what Red Ink can do for you less than five minutes:
What do I need to run Red Ink?
Red Ink runs on Word, Excel and Outlook for Windows (Office for Mac cannot be supported for technical reasons).
All you need is a so-called API access to a large language model (LLM), which is either operated by yourself or – as is usually the case – in the cloud. The tool supports the API access of numerous providers such as OpenAI, Microsoft and Google and self-operated LLM. An API access is a technical access point to a language model directly for computers. With commercial providers, usage is paid for on a per-use basis, is very affordable.
Using the services via API access also usually allows you to protect data much better because the corresponding contracts are possible for API access that are not offered to consumer services. This is how we do it; for example, we have a contract with Google that allows us to use Red Ink with all data, even data subject to professional confidentiality. This has not been possible for us with conventional AI services so far.
What are other specifications?
- The add-ins have English user dialogues, but can process texts, tables, etc. in all the languages supported by the respective LLM;
- The add-ins are developed as COM add-ins for Word, Excel and Outlook (but not the 'new' one) in VB.Net and are installed with an installer (available via https://apps.vischer.com); the add-ins have an update function
- Red Ink runs (only) on Windows;
- For certain additional functions (context menus, keyboard shortcuts, using the AI function of Red Ink from within your own Excel applications), the installation of helper add-ins in VBA (macros) for Word and Excel is required; however, Red Ink can also be used without them to a large extent;
- The source code of the add-ins is freely accessible (via GitHub, some to 10'000 lines of executable code); the compiled code is digitally signed by us for security reasons
- API access is via a https request (i.e. the transmission is encrypted);
- The add-ins can be extensively configured via a readable and editable configuration file – right down to the prompts they use for their functions; the configuration can be centralised and carried out by the users themselves;
- The Excel add-in has its own API that can be accessed by other Excel files (this makes it very easy to implement AI functions in other spreadsheets; see the example at the end);
- The API keys or private keys (for OAuth 2.0) can be protected with a light encryption;
- Users do not have to log-in;
- There is no logging or user access management (this has to be implemented separately);
- The browser extension requires a Chromium browser (Edge, Chrome, Firefox); Red Ink appears there in the context menu, provided it is not blocked by the respective application;
- The transcription function is currently based on the Vosk open-source models and the Whisper models from OpenAI; no audio data is stored for legal reasons, but audio files can also be transcribed;
- The Google Text-to-Speech API is used to generate speech (e.g. for creating podcasts and audiobooks) (requires a corresponding account);
- A prompt library with various sample prompts is included (some of which are from third parties).
Further information, in particular on functionality, can be found in the Red Ink user and installation guide.
What does Red Ink cost?
For the time being, nothing. We originally developed Red Ink just for ourselves. However, due to popular demand, we are now making Generation 2 of the tool available to all interested parties outside our firm with the beta test, and for the time being free of charge (license). We will have to consider how we will proceed after this phase. However, the tool will in all likelihood continue to be free of charge for personal use, and even for larger installations we assume that the costs will be significantly lower than for other solutions.
Where can I get Red Ink?
Red Ink in Generation 2 may be installed or downloaded from our deployment server: apps.vischer.com
Installation is done either by clicking on the red buttons (if your security settings allow it), or by downloading the installation package. This is all described in detail in the user and installation instructions, along with the configuration and, of course, how to use the tool. The full-length recordings from the demo video and other content are also available on the deployment server. The source code is available on GitHub. Just go to review it to see what we are doing and which (open source) libraries we use, and if you want to compile it yourself for security reasons, you can do so, too.
What people say
Feeback we received internally and externally on Red Ink (Generation 1 and Generation 2):
"Beats Copilot by far"
"Very cool"
"I already use Red Ink daily and I'm a big fan!"
"Red Ink, the AI tool for Microsoft Office that has significantly boosted my productivity here at VISCHER, is now available to everyone!"
"The program is brilliant! You don't have to upload anything, but can instruct directly from Word, Excel or Outlook, and as a layman, thanks to your preset commands, you are naturally guided to what you frequently need. The 'Quick Reference' is also a joy."
"I've been using your software more and more since the beginning of the year and I think it's really great."
"I think Red Ink is great. Very helpful when writing e-mails!"
"Wow. What Red [Ink] is capable of is really awesome. Not only in terms of textual quality, but also in terms of contextualized content."
"That rocks" (referring to the audio functions)
"Very cool – setting up a functioning Whisper on a PC is really tedious." (referring to the Transcriptor)
In our experience, the most frequently used functions are those for translating and correcting and improving texts, the bubbles function and the chatbot that is directly integrated into Word.
Of course, Red Ink is only as good and fast as the language model used in the background for the results. The negative feedback we received during the Alpha test phase mainly concerned cases in which the chatbot did not follow commands exactly, formatting was lost, Red Ink hung on texts that were too large, security settings blocked installation or updates, certain markup functions took too long, Outlook disabled the add-in because it loaded too slowly (which in our experience happens when it repeatedly takes more than half or full second; we made some adjustments to overcome that), and that live transcription of spoken German language does not yet work reliably enough when using local models (we are working on connecting larger online models). There were also people who complained that Red Ink is not available on the Mac (which is due to limited functionality for add-ins on Office for Mac).
Is there support?
We are still a law firm and therefore do not offer the same support as a software company. But we are, of course, interested in maintaining and improving the tool. So, if you find a bug, have suggestions for improvements, or any other comments or questions, please let us know by emailing [email protected] or David Rosenthal (the author of Red Ink), or by providing input via GitHub. If you feel you need more support, please let us know and we will see what we can do for you.
Is there a mailing list?
Yes, please register yourself below, if you want to be on the Red Ink mailing list. We will notify you if there is a new version or if there are other relevant developments. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in the e-mails. You may also want to subscribe to our blogs, for example, on AI and Data & Privacy – or visit our collection of information and materials on AI law.
Is there more than Red Ink?
Yes, there is more!
Red Ink for Excel allows you to build additional applications that use AI more easily, as you can directly access the AI features of Red Ink from within other spreadsheets. For example, we have built the "Red Ink Analyzer", which is a contract and legal text analysis tool that is also open source and allows you to verify whether contracts, privacy notices etc. comply with certain requirements (which you can enter into the tool) and whether they have some other issues. The tool can also systematically search a collection of texts for specific content, which can be helpful for investigations, for example. The results can then be re-imported into a review tool like "Relativity".
The Red Ink Excel (and its helper module) add-in needs to be installed to use the "Red Ink Analzyer", and the Analyzer will use the LLM configured within the Red Ink add-in.
Here's a screenshot of the Red Ink Analyzer:
Some of you may also already know or be using "VGPT", VISCHER's own AI client front-end tool, which is Excel based and can be configured for OpenAI's API and the API of Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Services. It is free and open source and can be downloaded here (as with Red Ink, it requires that digitally signed macros are enabled, it runs only on Windows and you need to have subscribed to a LLM endpoint).
Here's a screenshot of VGPT:
