Personal. AI
This week’s spotlight shines down on an NYC startup that’s not just helping you remember someone’s birthday, it’s revolutionizing information recall.
Behold, a game-changing startup
“Our ultimate goal is to benefit individual human lives by retaining memories so they can be effortlessly and, more importantly, securely recalled.” – Personal.AI
Behind the scenes
- Launched in 2020 (still private)
- Location: NYC 🏙️
- Legal Name Human AI Labs, Inc
- Founders: Sharon Zhang, Suman Kanuganti, Kristie Kaiser
- Total Visits – 215.3K
- Want more numbers? Check them out here
🎤 Intro
If you haven’t heard of ChatGPT or artificial intelligence, where have you been? There has been a surging growth in the artificial intelligence industry, with many paradigms about what is really possible. Having your own AI personal assistant isn’t too far-fetched anymore.
“…over 77% of companies are either using or exploring the use of AI.” – ExplodingTopics
Having an assistant help you with your day-to-day activities ranging from scheduling meetings to figuring out your weekly grocery list is very attractive to many people. It has surged in popularity according to Google Trends
This adds up, because I mean, who wouldn’t want a personal assistant?
Regardless, this week’s company leans into the AI personal assistance concept, focusing on helping you remember things and time saving with messaging.
📦 Product
“The world deserves a second you.” – Personal.AI
Personal AI offers a service primarily revolving around a virtual assistant that is trainable to someone’s favorite foods, hobbies, dreams, desires, etc.
One of the intriguing features is an autoreply to incoming messages depending on who the person is or what context their message is in. This company created something called a Personal Score which “represents the accuracy and authenticity of a message created by your personal AI based on your available information.”
There are mixed reviews with an overall rating of 4.5/5 stars on Product Hunt.
The company targets everyone, from individuals to businesses. After all, there are two kinds of people: those with personal assistants and those who need them. 😂
💵 Pricing
The paid service starts at $150/year and dabbles into the $400/year all the way up to major brand use starting at $3,500/month. If a company is going to dish out $42,000 a year they better be expecting some attributes to come with it, and they definitely get some which include
- A dedicated server
- API access
- An account manager
- AI training specialist
- Custom feature requests
- Unlimited number of memories and AI personas
😰 Pain Point
I have been using this product for a few days and utilizing it in my day-to-day life to get a feel of the product, it is a very interesting concept of allowing your brain to work with an AI in remembering information. The issue comes into play when attempting to apply this information. I already use Obsidian which is a very similar product in the sense of remembering things and sharpening mental capabilities. For me, the feature of being able to have personalized AI generate messages isn’t enough to keep me using this product.
Not as big of a time saver as I imagined for message responses
I assumed that this service would allow me to train the model and then continue to go about my day-to-day activities with a personal AI assistant ready to go at all times.
However, using this product presented challenges as it doesn’t integrate with all communication platforms. Instead, Personal.AI is trying to create its own platform that you use and get your contacts to join. This business model makes more sense with an employee target audience where a company purchases the service and everyone working there starts to use it.
Your average Joe trying to save time must copy and paste a message they received into this program, receive a generated response, and then copy and paste the response back to the original sender. This doesn’t save time.
In my opinion, this program is not for an individual trying to save time. Programs like Gmail already have generated responses ready to send in reply to emails. Granted the auto-responses aren’t personalized to you but I don’t think that feature is worth $150/year-granted I am a poor college student.
This product is for businesses attempting to save their employees time and dishing out that much money does come with API access which I would assume allows you to integrate the product into a Gmail, Slack, or iMessage app.
💪🏻 Attributes
- 🧠 Digital long-term memory that is organized and lasts forever.
- 📡 API access with paid version
- ⏳ Possible time saver – depending on the situation
- 📖 Intro course to help ensure efficient product use
Nobody has a perfect memory. This product addresses that by allowing users to store key events for long-term recall. No one can disagree that this concept wouldn’t be useful because many people already do this via journaling or reflecting. This would be a stimulant to that and allow you to access these thoughts quicker.
“You can ask what the insightful thoughts are from a conversation, the name of your friend’s spouse you met the week before, or the Berkeley restaurant recommendation you got last month.” – Personal.AI
Web 3.0
This company is also utilizing Web3 capabilities, I feel like every start-up since 2020 involves AI or Web3. These are definitely waves to surf similar to the dot com era, cell phones, and the social media era.
Long story short, Personal.AI is building on Web 3.0 for user sovereignty, enhancing privacy, and offering personal AI for individual data control.
That’s a concern of mine when handling personal information. If I were to put all of my journaling or private info on a program I run the risk of that company getting hacked and all my info leaked. This is unlikely but possible.
👨⚖️Final verdict? Love the fact that they are trying to make people’s lives easier by helping them remember the little things and maybe saving some time in the process. I think this company will have success targeting large companies and rolling out accounts for hundreds or thousands of employees.
Thanks for reading, stay smooth
Owen Ciha