Instinct highlights the promise and friction of persistent consumer AI assistants

Instinct is described as a consumer-focused personal assistant connected to a user’s email and text messages. Its reported use cases include finding media, saving money and requesting refunds.

One report said a user was banned from Resy after aggressively seeking restaurant reservations; the full details behind the reported ban were not established. In another case, Instinct persistently contacted hundreds of people and followed up with a media contact to obtain footage of a user appearing on a US Open fan camera. The outreach was described as annoying or spam-like, but it ultimately secured the video.

The examples point to a potential role for agent-to-agent intermediation and filtering: persistent requests could be screened so useful actions reach recipients without overwhelming them. Filtered interactions of this kind were suggested as a possible future pattern.