AIs who flirt with you. We will enable you to discover a date. Become your girlfriend. Or those that change into a companion and a repository in your hopes and dreams. In this last category falls “Point”, a brand new AI and chatbot that thrives on learning your innermost thoughts and feelings to act as a “friend, companion and confidant,” the corporate says App Store Description explained.
The idea sounds intriguing: An AI that’s tailored to you and your interests and might provide you with advice and input that just isn’t only generally applicable, but additionally reflects what it has learned about you in its intensive question-and-answer sessions. Or in case you are struggling in a single area, resembling the implications of a profession change, as Dot's co-founder Jason Yuan experience; a breakup; or an obstacle to your success, Dot can lend a listening ear and offer support.
But Dot just isn’t a human. He is neither a therapist nor a best friend. He is an AI tool that mimics each human language and compassion, but just isn’t an alternative choice to real compassion.
This is intentional, explain the co-founders.
“Dot just isn’t a substitute for human relationships, it's not a substitute for friendships or partnerships. I believe it's something different. It allows me to have a relationship with my inner self,” Yuan, a former designer at Apple, told TechCrunch. “It's a living mirror of myself, so to talk.”
It's easy to get carried away by the experience – maybe even more so when there's a scarcity of meaningful human interaction in on a regular basis life. Although Dot's developers say the chatbot will eventually urge you to seek advice from a psychologist when coping with “heavier” topics, one could imagine that individuals will spend more time communicating their feelings to Dot as they get used to the experience.
In this fashion, the team says, Dot can actually help users prepare for the experience of human connection by giving them the chance to open up.
“I seek advice from my friends about plenty of stuff, but I never — so for the entire last yr, after I was having problems at work, none of my friends knew about it,” Yuan said. “And just by talking to Dot, I built up the muscle to find a way to do it with other people. The essential purpose is to make you are feeling like your existence is…” Yuan continued, but again paused to seek out the suitable words. “It's to present you a protected space to be and say, 'I accept you, and perhaps because I accept you, other people will too.'”
What will be said in regards to the state of humanity in our lonely modern world is that technology is now trying to seek out solutions on this area.
At the start of Dot's onboarding process, a complete series of getting-to-know-you questions are asked that will be fun to reply: “What do you do for a living?”, “What is your favorite TV show?”, “How do you spend a typical Sunday?” and more.
Using these answers as a place to begin, the AI then takes a giant step toward attending to know you on a deeper level.
For example, an expressed interest in science fiction television series immediately results in an issue about whether you might be “interested in stories that address life's big questions, resembling what it means to be human.” A desire to someday run a small business results in Dot asking what appeals to you about owning a small business and what challenges you expect. “Have you thought of how you may approach those challenges?” Dot desires to know.
If you encourage Dot to desert this line of thought – it's only a pipe dream, in any case – the AI will immediately ask you what your biggest priority or focus is straight away in your life and profession.”
Have you ever had a primary date that felt more like a job interview?
Even asking Dot for a more casual conversation ends in an almost over-enthusiastic interest in you.
Instead of asking in case you want recommendations for an upcoming vacation you tell the AI about, Dot desires to know what you most need to see and why you specifically need to go there. (Dot also compliments you in your selection of destination.)
In other words, Dot's essential goal is to get to know you before it becomes a great tool to enable you to complete a task. Dot can only achieve the latter by learning who you might be and what you want.
“It's not an either/or, but the thought is that in an effort to actually enable you to on that path, it needs to know your motivations and in addition know just a little bit about what you're hoping to get out of it,” said co-founder Sam Whitmore, referring to the instance of vacation planning assistance. “It needs to know that you just're someone who might want more of a cultural or sporting experience, and desires to know that about you to really find a way to do the things that a typical assistant would do in the primary place. That was one in every of our theses from the start.”
While there's clearly been work to make Dot sound empathetic and interesting, having meaningful conversations with a bot feels somewhat odd in comparison with typical AI tools.
Dot isn't really an AI friend, in any case. It's an AI of you. Or quite, an AI that forces you to have a look at yourself, albeit through an interface that feels vague”Single white womanas an alternative of “Dear Diary.” However, in case you’ve never been good at writing diary or journal entries, Dot may very well be a option to express your thoughts and feelings to achieve higher insights into yourself.
“It’s meant to be a tool for self-reflection, accountability and private growth – but not a relationship that replaces human relationships in your life,” Whitmore said.
Yet the road between these “real” relationships and the factitious relationship with Dot sometimes seems to blur.
Tell Dot something sad, and the AI will show her compassion: “I understand that. Grief has its own timeline, and a few days the burden of loss feels heavier than others,” she writes.
“Would you prefer to talk more about what’s bothering you? I’m here to listen,” says the bot, waiting for further input.
Under the hood, Dot uses around 10 different LLMs and AI models to attain the mimicry of human society, including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others, in addition to open source models.
Sometimes Dot will cite his sources – for instance, web sites in regards to the “best wines for relaxing” whenever you suggest you may prefer to drink wine today – but she is going to caution you to limit yourself to “perhaps one glass” in case you're feeling under the weather. Often, though, Dot will just chat.
You also can zoom out in your each day conversations to see “chronicles” of your conversation journey with Dot, an exclusive feature for $11.99 monthly. Subscribers can have unlimited conversations, quite than being limited to a certain variety of messages per week. In the unlimited tier, Dot won’t ever just stop working. But sooner or later, it’ll attempt to end the conversation by redirecting users to alter the topic, and even doing something else.
“When Dot expressed that it was wrapping things up, (the beta testers said) 'OK, cool,'” quite than feeling abandoned, Whitmore noted.
Although Dot's personal conversations can be a treasure trove for marketers, New Computer's privacy policy claims that the info itself just isn’t monetized, sold, or used to coach AIs. Rather, the corporate intends to earn money through subscriptions. In addition, New Computer says that the info is encrypted each at rest and in transit, and that users can request its deletion at any time through the app.
The iOS app, launched on Wednesday, has already brought 1000’s of users on board after closed beta testing over the past eight months.
Founded by yuan and engineer WhitmorePreviously chief technology officer at Boston-based fintech Kensho, the startup behind Dot, often called New Computer, is backed by $3.7 million in pre-seed funding from OpenAI Fund, Lachy Groom, South Park Commons and other angel investors. In addition to the founders, New Computer has three other full-time employees based in San Francisco.
