Is Now a Good Time to Meet Your New Virtual Assistant?

By: Will Knight

Narrated by: Todd Mundt

I recently got my own personal assistant, called Amy. My new helper is amazingly attentive and diligent, but also a bit strange. For one thing, she seems completely obsessed with organizing meetings and pretty much refuses to talk about anything else. Amy isn't a real person but a software agent that exists somewhere in the cloud and communicates with my contacts and me by e-mail, helping set up and reschedule meetings and other appointments. The software is being developed by a company called X.ai, which hopes to create something that seems virtually indistinguishable from a real human, juggling calendars with care, tact, and consummate attention to detail.©Massachusetts Institute of Technology (P)Massachusetts Institute of Technology