AI personal assistants are here, and the fight is over trust (opens the source in a new tab)
- After chatbots and voice assistants, AI is turning into a true personal assistant that acts for you, the column argues. Meta’s Muse books appointments, fills in forms and shops, and now has a keychain device, Muse Charm.
- Start-up Instinct, reachable by text, WhatsApp or phone, raised $250m at a $2.5bn valuation in August and was valued at $10bn a month later; Apple, Google and Amazon are building rivals.
- Being useful means reading your email, calendar and even bank details, so trust is the battleground; Amazon has already blocked Muse from shopping on its site.
- $10bn
- Instinct’s value, a month on
- $250m
- Instinct’s August raise
Why it matters The next platform war is over who acts on your behalf, and with Muse due in India soon, the privacy question is about to get practical for Indian users.
Other side Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant also promised a helper and ended up setting timers; platforms such as Amazon can simply refuse to let agents in.