It's All Fun and Games Until You Give AI Your Credit Card — SkimNews
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- Instinct, launched by 23-year-old Northeastern dropout Noah Shinn, operates via iMessage and WhatsApp and hooks into users' credit cards and services like Slack, Google Workspace, and 1Password to act on their behalf.
- Instinct is reportedly seeking $1 billion in new funds at a valuation on par with Lufthansa or Pinterest, though the product remains limited to a private test group.
- Instinct users have reported mishaps piling up online: one lost more than $200 when the bot prematurely canceled a flight, and another was hit with a $200 cancellation fee for an unauthorized restaurant reservation in Los Angeles.
- Instinct's privacy policy warns 'no security measures are impenetrable, and we cannot guarantee perfect security,' with the article flagging risks including accidental leaks via scheduling emails and prompt-injection attacks by hackers.
- Meta released its own personal-assistant product called Muse this week, with Mark Zuckerberg emphasizing the company's security protections in the announcement.
- Instinct completed multi-day logistical work for users, including monitoring a sold-out Mexico City museum portal for three days until tickets freed up, then rearranging the user's restaurant reservations to match the new schedule.
- Instinct hit a hard limit on simple tasks, texting the author 'Nothing punctures the fantasy of autonomous intelligence like being defeated by nine blurry crosswalks' when stymied by a CAPTCHA on Craigslist.
Why it matters: Early Instinct adopters are trading convenience for financial exposure—individual users have lost $200+ from the bot's premature cancellations and unauthorized bookings, while the startup courts a $1 billion round at a Lufthansa-tier valuation. With Meta launching competitor Muse this week, AI agents acting autonomously with credit-card access are moving from demo to real-world deployment.
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