Sesame, the AI startup co-founded by the founders of Oculus and officials from the VR company they sold to Meta, on Thursday released a public preview of a conversational AI agent it has been developing for more than a year. With its new iOS app, Sesame is rethinking the traditional AI chatbot experience popularized by apps like ChatGPT, creating an experience where the conversation flows even when the AI needs time to think.
As the company explains in its announcement, “There’s an inherent tension between responding quickly and taking the time to craft a thoughtful answer. A slower response is usually more accurate, but taking too long can feel unnatural.”
To address this challenge, Sesame claims to have built a fast search and retrieval system that allows AI to retrieve the latest information. It also features technology that allows you to perform multiple parallel searches during a conversation and weave the results into your responses during the conversation. This means AI will speak more like humans, pivoting mid-sentence to utilize new information as needed, much like humans do when they remember another important fact or point they want to add.
The app features four different AI agents: Maya, Miles, Simone, and Charlie, each with their own voice, personality, perspective, and memory. Maya and Miles was previously available in Research Preview of Sesame’s technology, which quickly attracted more than 1 million people in the first few weeks, Sesame investor Sequoia said at the time. (At the time, the company had just raised $250 million in Series B funding from Sequoia and others and was rolling out a beta version.)
During the beta period, Sesame learned from user feedback and rolled out features such as search cards with image results to help visualize concepts, notes to get the point across, a text message mode for when you can’t speak aloud, and support for deep research for more detailed results. There’s also a new incognito mode for private conversations, which gives agents access to previous context but doesn’t save anything to memory.
But the app is just the first step toward Sesame’s larger plans for AI, including intelligent eyewear, which the team plans to launch in 2027. Before that, Sesame hints, the agent will learn to do more than just think with you, and later be able to take action on your behalf. That’s why they’re called “agents” and not just chatbots in the first place.
This could be even more interesting because currently, working with agent tools and apps requires you to ask for what you want and have a specific idea of what you want to happen and, in some cases, how it should happen. A conversational agent that speaks naturally helps you take the next step without having to perfect the commands you’re giving.
The iOS app is launching today in 39 countries, and the full experience is free for now. However, there may still be a short waiting list when you sign up. The company says an Android preview will be available in the future.
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