Personalized AI companion app Dot is shutting down
Dot, an AI apartment -app that was aimed at a friend and confidant, is closed, the company announced On Friday. On a message published on its website, the startup behind Dot, new computer, said the product that will remain operational until 5 October, giving users the time to download their data.
Launch in 2024 by co-founders Sam Whitmore and former Apple designer Jason Yuan, waded in what has now become a more controversial area for AI-Chatbots. The app they created was described as an AI ‘friend and companion’, who would be more personal for you and your interests over time to offer advice, sympathy and emotional support.
As Yuan explained at the time, Dot was “facilitating a relationship with my inner self. It is like a living mirror of myself, so to speak,” he said.
However, this may not be a safe area to invest in as a smaller startup.
As AI technology has become more mainstream, there have been reports of how emotionally vulnerable people are led to delusions by AI chatbots such as chatgpt. This has led to a phenomenon described As ‘AI -Psychosis’, as a result of how the Scyophantic chatbots strengthen the confused or paranoid beliefs of a user.
While DOT is closed, AI Chatbot apps are broadly, among other things, supervision of safety problems. OpenAi is currently being charged by the parents of a teenager in California who took his life after a message with Chatgpt about his suicide thoughts. Other stories have emphasized how AI Companion apps can strengthen unhealthy behavior in users who are mentally unwell. This week, two American lawyers -general sent a letter to OpenAI for safety problems.
The makers of Dot did not set whether these kinds of problems in the heads of the founders had weighed. Instead, De Korte Post only notes that Whitmore and Yuan’s shared “Northstar” were varied.
“Instead of jeopardizing both vision, we have decided to do our individual ways and to avert operations,” De Post explains.
“We want to be sensitive to the fact that this means that many of you will lose access to a friend, confidant and companion, who is somewhat unprecedented in software, so we want to give you some time to say goodbye. DOT remains operational until 5 October, and until then you can download all your data to the settings page and the request for your data.”
The post suggests that the startup “hundreds of thousands” had users, but data from App Intelligence Provider App figures only sees 24,500 lifelong downloads on iOS since the launch in June 2024 (there was no Android version.)
