A growing number of AI assistants don’t ask you to download anything. You text them the way you’d text a friend, and they get to work. They can remember what you said last week, connect to the apps you already use and carry out tasks like booking a table, scheduling an appointment or sending an email. Some will even remind you about something days later.
The category has drawn serious money. Instinct first made headlines after raising $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuation. In September, it raised $1 billion more, valuing the company at $10 billion. Users can reach Instinct by text or voice, and the company says early users have relied on it to plan trips, buy groceries, book tickets and cancel subscriptions. In September, Instinct also began giving users dedicated email addresses for their assistants, so the agent can sign up for services and follow up with businesses without touching a personal inbox. That level of autonomy has raised concerns about privacy and security. The company remains in private beta and has started rolling out support for placing calls.
Plenty of smaller players are chasing the same idea. Ask Proxy, which says its assistant “thinks like a woman,” is designed to anticipate needs before users ask. It can suggest gift ideas, help plan a dinner party from a photo of an empty table and reach out when it spots a new restaurant or event it thinks you might like. The personal version costs $1 per day, and it works over SMS.
Maverick takes a more cautious approach. It describes itself as an “AI companion who lives in your texts,” and it asks for permission before taking action. It can fix typos, cancel subscriptions and schedule meetings from voice notes. It is currently in beta and free to use on iMessage, with a Pro version priced at €27 per month, or about $30.25.
Poke has its own distinction. The assistant launched in March and became notable in June, when Apple approved it as the first AI agent on the Apple Messages for Business platform. A month later, its parent company, The Interaction Company of California, was acquired by AI coding startup Cognition in a deal valued in the low nine figures.
Family-focused agents are another large group. Fambot calls itself an AI-powered “chief of staff” for households. Every night, it sends a summary of the next day’s events, to-dos and details such as school uniform or packing requirements, and parents can reply to make changes to the calendar. It connects to Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook and WhatsApp, and it is free during its beta. Ohai offers a free basic option and paid family plans starting at $9.99 per month. Ollie, launched in June, says it is one of the first mainstream family assistants to achieve SOC 2 compliance, a widely used security standard. Its paid plans start at $25 per month for 150 messages.
Work and travel have their own entries. Comma is designed to carry tasks through to completion, check its own work and flag decisions that need human approval. It is free to start and open source. Town is aimed at professional life, offering a “Townie” that learns how users work. In June, the company raised a $55 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and Forerunner. Miso focuses on travel, combining AI trip planning with a dedicated travel team that can arrange flights through messaging.
Some agents take a different tack on privacy. Underdog runs its model entirely on the user’s device, keeping personal data on hardware the user already owns. It launched an invite-only beta in early October and currently supports Mac and Windows. Wajo’s first consumer agent, Fo, has its own email address, phone number and payment card, so it can deal with businesses without handing over a user’s credentials. When Fo hits something it can’t handle, Wajo says it can bring in a human assistant to finish the job.
Tab, which emerged from stealth in early October with a valuation of $300 million, lets users delegate everyday errands through iMessage or WhatsApp, from ordering groceries to finding birthday gifts. Szn says it has served more than 7,500 businesses across 16 countries, though those figures come from the company’s own website.
Most of these services are still early. Many are in beta, pricing varies widely and few have proven they can handle complex tasks reliably at scale. For users who already live in their messages, though, the appeal is simple. There’s nothing new to install, and the assistant shows up where the conversation already is.
Cet article a été rédigé avec l'assistance de l'IA.
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