On Thursday, the AI startup Sesameco-founded by the founders of Oculus and others from the VR company it sold to Meta, has released a public preview of the conversational AI agents it has been developing for more than a year. With the new iOS appSesame rethinks the traditional AI chatbot experience popularized by apps like ChatGPT, creating an experience where the conversation flows, even if the AI needs time to think.
As the company explains in its launch communication“There is an inherent tension between responding quickly and taking time to write thoughtful responses. A slower response is usually more correct, but it can also feel unnatural if it takes too long.”
To address this challenge, Sesame claims to have built in fast search and retrieval systems so the AI can have up-to-date information, as well as technology that allows it to run multiple parallel searches while speaking, incorporating those results into its responses as it speaks. This means the AI will speak more like a human, even spinning mid-sentence if necessary, as it taps into newer information – just as a human might when remembering another key fact or point they want to add.
The app offers four distinct AI agents named Maya, Miles, Simone, and Charlie, each with their own distinct voice, personality, perspective, and memory. Maya and Miles were previously available in Sesame’s Research Preview for its technology, where they soon reached over a million people within the first few weeks. said investor Sesame Sequoia at that time. (The company had then just raised a $250 million Series B round from Sequoia and others, and was opening a beta.)
During beta, Sesame learned from user feedback and rolled out features like search cards with image results for visualizing concepts, notes for taking photos, a texting feature for those times when speaking out loud isn’t an option, and support for deep dives where you can get more detailed results. There is also a new incognito mode for private chats, which allows agents to access the previous environment, but does not store anything in memory.
The app, however, is just the first step toward Sesame’s bigger AI plans that include smart glasses, which the team expects to launch in 2027. Before that, agents will also learn to do more than think with you, Sesame hints, hinting that they’ll later be able to take action on your behalf.
This is potentially even more interesting as working with agent tools or applications today requires being able to ask for what you need and have a specific idea of what you want to happen and sometimes even how it will happen. An interlocutor that you could talk to naturally will help you take the next steps, without having to perfect the command you give them.
THE iOS app is currently available in 39 countries and the full experience is free for now. However, there may still be a short waiting list at registration. A Android Preview is coming in the future, the company says.
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