Dot, an AI companion app aimed at being friends and best friends, announced it had announced on Friday. The new computer behind Dot, a message published on the website, said that if the product continues to run until October 5th, it will provide users time to download data.
Launched in 2024 by co-founder Sam Whitmore and former Apple designer Jason Yuan, Dot has now remained in what has become a more controversial area of AI chatbots. The apps they create will become more personalized to you and your interests and more personalized to provide advice, sympathy and emotional support.
As the original at the time explained, Dot “fostered my relationship with my inner self, like a living mirror of my own,” he said.
However, this may not be a safe area to invest in as a smaller startup.
As AI technology becomes more mainstream, there are reports on how emotionally vulnerable people have been led by AI chatbots like ChatGpt into delusional thinking. This led to a phenomenon known as “AI psychosis,” which is attributed to how chatbots with circulatory disorders reinforce user confusing or paranoid beliefs.
Once DOT is closed, AI chatbot apps rely heavily on increasing scrutiny about safety concerns. Openai is currently being sued by the parents of a California teenager. Other stories highlight how AI companion apps can enhance unhealthy behaviors of mentally unpleasant users. This week, two U.S. Attorney Generals sent a letter to Openai about safety concerns.
The manufacturer of dots did not deal with whether these types of issues were heavy on the founder’s mind. Instead, a brief post only points out that Whitmore and Euan’s share “North Star” has diverged.
“We decided to go into separate ways and reduce operations rather than compromise on either vision,” the post explains.
“We want to be sensitive to the fact that this means that many people lose access to their somewhat unprecedented friends, best friends and peers in the software, so we want to give them time to say goodbye. DOT will continue to work until October 5th.
This post suggests that startups have “hunds of thousands of users,” but we believe that the App Intelligence Provider Appfigures data has only 24,500 lifetime downloads on iOS since its launch in June 2024 (there was no Android version).
