AI Agents That Live in Your Text Messages — SkimNews
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- Ask Proxy costs $1 per day for a personal assistant that proactively anticipates needs and works over SMS, with a business version starting at $15 per employee per month.
- Instinct raised $1 billion in September 2026, valuing it at $10 billion, and gives users dedicated email addresses for their assistants to manage accounts and tasks autonomously.
- Fambot organizes family life by connecting to services like Gmail and Google Calendar, sending nightly summaries, and plans to eventually charge roughly the equivalent of a Netflix subscription.
- Caddy lives in iMessage or RCS, identifies actionable items from emails and conversations, and has been in public beta since April 2026.
- Ollie is a family-focused AI assistant that achieved SOC 2 compliance and offers paid plans starting at $25 per month for 150 messages.
Why it matters: These agents shift AI from conversational chatbots to proactive delegates that act on a user's behalf, creating a direct channel for task automation within everyday communication. The move into SMS and iMessage bypasses app stores, but the autonomy—like Instinct managing email accounts—raises immediate privacy and security questions for users and businesses.
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