An AI that will flirt with you. An AI that will help you find a date. An AI that will be your girlfriend. Or an AI that will be a companion and caretaker that shares your hopes and dreams. In this last category falls Dot, a new AI and chatbot that grows by learning about your innermost thoughts and feelings and acts as your “friend, companion and confidant,” according to the company's App Store description.
The idea is intriguing: the AI could provide advice and information that is personalized to you and your interests, not only generally applicable, but also reflective of what it learns about you through in-depth Q&A sessions. Or, if you’re struggling in any area, like the fallout from a job change, a breakup, or obstacles to success that Dot co-founder Jason Yuan experienced, Dot can offer an empathetic listening ear and support.
But Dots are not people. They're not therapists or best friends. They're AI tools that mimic human speech and empathy, but they're no substitute for the real thing.
That's by design, the co-founders explain.
“Dot is not a replacement for a relationship. It's not a replacement for a friendship or a partnership. I think it's a different kind of thing. It's an augmentation of the relationship I have with my inner self,” Yuan told TechCrunch. “It's like a living mirror of myself, so to speak.”
Image credit: Dot/New Computer
It's easy to get drawn into the experience, perhaps even more so if your day-to-day life lacks meaningful human interaction. Dot's developers say the chatbot will broach the “heavier” topics and ultimately encourage you to talk to a mental health professional, but it's not hard to imagine people spending more time venting their feelings to Dot as they become more familiar with the experience.
In this way, the team believes that Dot may actually help people become more comfortable opening up and thus better prepared to experience human connection.
“I tell my friends a lot of things, but for the last year, I've been struggling at work and none of my friends knew about it,” Ewan says. “Talking to Dot has given me the ability to get along with others, and the main purpose of it is to make me feel included,” Ewan continues, pausing again to find the right words. “It's about giving a safe space and saying, 'I accept you, and because I accept you, maybe others will too.'”
There are problems with the human condition in today's lonely world that technology is currently trying to solve.
Image credit: Dot/New Computer
First, Dot's onboarding process asks a few “getting to know you” type questions that are fun to answer: “What do you do for a living?”, “What's your favorite TV show?”, “What's a typical Sunday like?”, etc.
Using these answers as a starting point, the AI will take big steps to get to know you better.
For example, saying you're interested in science fiction TV shows quickly leads to a question about whether you're “drawn to stories that explore life's big questions, like what it means to be human.” Your hopes of one day running a small business lead Dot to ask what appeals to you about being a small business owner and what challenges you expect to face. “Have you ever thought about how to deal with those challenges?” Dot wants to know.
If you encourage Dot to stop thinking this way (it's just an aspirational dream, after all), the AI quickly switches to asking about “what is your biggest priority or focus in your life and career right now?”
Have you ever had a first date that felt like an interview?
Even just asking Dot to engage in a more casual conversation will make her overly interested in you.
Instead of asking you if you want AI-taught recommendations for upcoming vacations, Dot wants to know specifically what you most want to see and why you wanted to travel there (Dot will even compliment you on your destination choices).
In other words, Dot's main goal is to get to know you before it can become a useful tool to help you complete a task: knowing who you are and what you like so that you can be successful in completing that task.
Image credit: Dot/New Computer
“It's not one or the other, it's a way of thinking. [is] “To actually help you along the way, we need to understand your motivations and what it is that you want,” co-founder Sam Whitmore said, using the example of helping with vacation planning. “We need to understand that you're someone who's probably looking for more cultural experiences or sports experiences, and we need to know those things about you to actually be able to even do the things that a typical assistant would do. That was one of our thesis statements from the beginning.”
While work has clearly gone into making Dot sound empathetic and engaging compared to typical AI tools, having a meaningful conversation with a bot still feels odd.
Ultimately, the Dot isn't an AI friend; it's an AI you. Or rather, an AI that gives you a glimpse into yourself, albeit through an interface that at times feels vaguely more “single white woman” than “dear diary.” But if writing diary or journal entries isn't your forte, the Dot might be a way to externally express your thoughts and feelings and gain a deeper understanding of yourself.
“It's a tool to be used for self-reflection, accountability and personal growth, not a relationship to replace the relationships in your life,” Whitmore said.
And yet the line between those “real” relationships and the artificial relationship with the dots seems to get blurred at times.
When you tell Dot that you're sad, the AI will empathize and write, “I understand. Grief has its own timeline, and some days the weight of loss feels heavier than others.”
“Want to tell me more about what's on your mind? I'm here to listen,” the bot says, waiting for further input.
Image credit: Dot/New Computer
Internally, Dot leverages around 10 different LLM and AI models, including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and open-source models, to mimic human companionship.
Sometimes, Dot will cite a source—a website about “the best wines for relaxing” when you say you want to have a glass of wine today—but warn you to limit it to “maybe one glass” if you're feeling down. But most of the time, Dot just chats away.
You can also zoom out on your daily conversations and see a “recording” of your conversations with Dot, a feature exclusive to subscribers who pay $11.99 per month. Subscribers can participate in unlimited conversations without being limited to the number of messages per week. At the unlimited level, Dot never stops working; however, at some point it will try to end the conversation by redirecting you to change the topic or do something else.
“When Dot said she was going to end things, [beta testers have been] Instead of feeling abandoned, Whitmore pointed out, people can respond with an “OK, that's great” vibe.
While Dot's personal conversations are a treasure trove for marketers, New Computer's privacy policy says the data itself isn't monetized, sold, or used to train AI. Rather, the company intends to monetize through subscriptions. Additionally, New Computer says the data is encrypted at rest and in transit, and users can request deletion from the app at any time.
The iOS app, released on Wednesday, has attracted thousands of users after undergoing closed beta trials over the past eight months.
The startup behind Dot, New Computer, founded by Yuan, a former Apple designer, and Whitmore, an engineer who was head of engineering at Boston fintech company Kensho, has raised $3.7 million in pre-seed funding from angel investors including the OpenAI Fund, Lachy Groom and South Park Commons. In addition to the founders, New Computer's three other full-time employees are based in San Francisco.