If I were to make a bet, I’d say personal AI assistants are what's going to take off moving forward. When the tech geeks were playing with Open Claw and Hermes, the not-so-technical but curious watched on the sidelines (or maybe they didn’t, who knows).
But as technology and the practical application of AI progressed, and as these companies sought more users, it only made sense that agentic AI should and would become easier to deploy, implement, and use.
And that’s what’s happening now.
Grok Bot is the ‘easy’ version of having a team of AI agents work for you as a personal assistant. My previous article talked about how I set up a Chief of Staff (whom I recently renamed Bot Boss) and a team of AI agent bots to do its bidding. Whatever I told the Bot Boss to do, it would assign to the relevant team member and it would get done. (Except it failed to record a tech meeting I couldn’t attend because I was teaching a tech class at the same time… how disappointing.)
Enter Muse, which I’ve only heard about as if it were a legend. It’s not available in Canada yet, but social media, podcasts and YouTube videos are praising its capabilities.
But here’s a new one I did try: Instinct.
I heard about it on a podcast (Greg Isenberg’s – you should listen to him). I visited the website, and it was as plain as my first HTML websites I built in the 90’s. But they pulled the ‘invite-only’ launch. Still in beta, you needed an invite code to join.
I eventually found my way around this and simply registered on the waitlist. Within minutes, I was invited. I registered with my phone number, it asked me if I wanted to connect with iMessage or WhatsApp (I chose WhatsApp), and I was off to the races.
As is typical with trying a new piece of AI technology, I asked it to do something stupid. I was about to present on stage alongside Matt Richling, not an AI nerd but quite skilled at deploying AI for his real estate business. And I simply said this as I was about to go on stage:
Look for Matt Richling profiles and send him an email. Ask him how he gets his hair like that.
Instinct replied:
Found him: Matt Richling, the Ottawa RE/MAX agent. He publishes Matt@MattRichling.com.
Draft:
Subject: Hair question
Hi Matt,
Random email, I know. I came across your profile and have to ask: how do you get your hair like that? Cut, product, routine - whatever the secret is, I'm listening.
Thanks, Johnder
Is that the right Matt, and should I send this from my assistant email? Your Gmail isn't connected yet.
I told Instinct to send the email. And it did. Not even using my own Gmail account but its own.
Excited, at 4:53am the next day, I asked it to do what every AI user who can’t really think of anything else AI agents should do… look up flights for me.
Needless to say it did what every other AI agent since ChatGPT could do… look up the flights.
Which brings me to both an aha and a ‘that’s quite obvious’ moment in using personal AI assistants.
You’ll save a few minutes, or more, with autonomous AI agents connected to whatever you trust it to touch, only to do pretty much the same tasks that everyone else is playing around with.
And yes, I do ‘vibe code’ with AI, and have built websites and apps with it – but again, this is just normal now.
Doing research, finding flights, booking hotels, building stuff, making silly content and AI slop…
Whenever a new piece of AI tech comes out, I hear the same thing over and over again from others, and I try the same thing I’ve tried on every single AI app I’ve ever used.
While I do believe personal AI assistants will be big – I mean… why book your own haircut when AI can do it for you, right… (sarcastic) – I have yet to really see someone do something really exciting with this capability.
The future of interfacing with apps and software will change. Instead of humans using a user interface to click buttons, fill out stuff, and do things on apps, personal AI assistants will start doing these things, and it’ll be the norm.
Yes, you’ll be able to simply ask for things, instead of doing it yourself on a search box, and your AI assistant will book the flight and hotel for you, provided you trust it enough with your credit card or bitcoin account.
Will personal AI agent assistants be the thing that brings AI use to the masses?
Yes. I believe so.
Will it change how we interact with websites, apps, and other software?
I 100% see this change happening.
Is this still exciting, or will it get saturated and boring after a while?
Well, after I built out everything I wanted to build when vibe coding came into the mix, I literally experienced both boredom and burnout. And I didn’t realize someone could experience both at the same time.
Will there be a revolutionary use case AI will bring to the table that solves a bigger problem we have today?
Or will we just simply be booking haircuts, flights, and hotels with this thing?