Virtual Personal Assistants Are Having A Moment

Virtual personal assistants do tasks for you. At work, a sophisticated one may act as a personal Chief of Staff that sorts and responds to Emails, sets your priorities, creates to-do lists, and schedules your appointments. Personal ones help with tasks such as planning vacations, booking hotels, reminding you of upcoming events or deadlines, and responding to communication. If granted more autonomy, they can even make purchases on your behalf. They develop a sense of "who you are" by "reading" your Emails, calendar, and more, or even by listening to your conversations.

Those of you who have followed my research over the past decade know I've been passionately tracking their progress. Building a profile of who I am from my Email, calendar, text messages, etc. is not a new idea. It wasn't even new 10 years ago. What is new is the technology's ability to do useful things for you (e.g., respond to and delete messages). Virtual personal assistants are finally having a moment. There are dozens of them. Here are a few of the big names:

• Instinct took off this past summer and already claims more than 100,000 users. In August, it raised a $250M Series B at a $2.5B valuation. Just a month later, it closed a $1B round at a $10B valuation. I am trialing the service. What I like so far is that I engage with it through text messaging or WhatsApp. Spear Street Technology built Instinct.

• Meta launched Muse on September 8th, 2026. It can not only retrieve information but also take action on your behalf. It essentially browses the web for you and does stuff, including bookings and payments. It is an app available on iOS and Android (in the U.S. and Canada for now). It makes the list thanks to 5 million downloads (per Sensor Tower) and more than 3 million weekly and 1 million daily active users (per The Information).

• OpenAI announced Dots on September 29th, 2026. It acts as a high-agency assistant that handles complex personal and workplace tasks independently. OpenAI cites connections to more than 4,000 apps. It can run in the background and take on tasks proactively. Each Dot runs on its own cloud computer, separate from your devices, and OpenAI says it doesn't train directly on a Dot's background research or notes. It will soon also be available via text messaging.

• Apple's Siri continues to evolve in its ability to work across the apps on your device. Apple focuses on privacy, i.e., it won't share your data with models or otherwise. The focus seems to be on controlling the device (e.g., responding to a text message or turning on the flashlight) and answering questions (e.g., "Where is my meeting at 3pm?"). Apple could have an enormous lead in virtual personal assistants if it had stronger Email and calendar apps. It would also need to deviate from some of its core values.
  

I am fascinated by the idea of an agent taking tedious tasks off my plate. We will each have our own examples. This past week, mine included filing receipts for FSA reimbursement and deleting thousands of unread (and unwanted) Email alerts from social media. (Punchline: the assistant failed at both.) It has been surprisingly good at telling me what I need to care about in my Email.

I am excited, yet I hold modest expectations of what they can do. I also worry (more like expect) that Silicon Valley will put too much energy into marketing niche use cases for busy, extremely affluent individuals instead of building services for a broader audience. I expect near-term success will be held back by:

• Heavy reliance on Email as the core source of information. These virtual personal assistants ask a lot of us when they ask for access to our Email. Many of us have probably forgotten about the long tail of information sitting in our inboxes. There was a time when we used Email to communicate with friends. Now it is full of receipts and marketing notices from every brand we've ever done business with. Mine is full of notifications about posts from friends and colleagues on social media. These services can use our Emails to train their models while providing yet-to-be-determined value to us. Our Emails are also a gold mine of information about us.

• A desire to use audio recordings, which affects our privacy and everyone else's. Employees are growing accustomed to being recorded in meetings. They cite the benefits of summaries, task lists, and analysis of the archives. We may look back in 10 years and think, "Why did I care that everyone recorded everything?" We aren't there today. Folks with attention disorders cite productivity benefits, which is valid. These audio recordings from personal devices, however, remind me of Progressive Insurance's "Replay" campaign. Two people argue about what was said or done (or not), and a replay official pops up with the footage to settle it.

• A world that isn't entirely digital or open to bots executing tasks on websites. My virtual personal assistant seemed very confident that it could file my out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for reimbursement. Then it came back and told me that my FSA service provider had blocked it from logging in and using the website. Fair. There are good reasons to do this. Duckbill solves this problem with a team of people who do the work that bots can't. Every service provider (i.e., website) will need to decide whether to allow these AI agents in. There are a lot of pros (e.g., convenience for people using personal assistants) and cons (e.g., security, loss of analytics, missed marketing opportunities).

• Consumer trust. When was the last time you handed your phone to someone and said, "Feel free to read all of my Emails and text messages"? Yes, we let Google or Apple offer to silence notifications or unsubscribe us. Google may be monetizing our data in aggregate. These virtual personal assistants feel different, even though many of them come from the same tech giants (e.g., Meta, OpenAI).

• Real cost over the long term. About two years ago, I gave a young entrepreneur access to my Gmail to manage my priorities, elevate important messages, etc. He offered a three-day trial. He shut me off after eight hours because parsing my Emails cost too much. Yes, tokens are cheaper now. But there is still a real cost to parsing hundreds of Emails each day, even if they are junk mail no one opens.