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Jolla , the erstwhile mobile maker work seclusion - centric AI business — via sister startup , Venho.ai — has withdraw the wraps off an AI assistant it says is a “ amply individual ” option to data - mining swarm whale crawling all over your personal selective information .
The AI assistant is design to desegregate with apps like email , calendar , and societal culture medium score to provide the user with a conversational world power dick that can surface information but also perform actions on the drug user ’s behalf . This means stuff and nonsense like summarizing electronic mail and documents , booking meetings , strain societal medium provender and performing web look - ups .
But they say the tool will also be capable to spin up Modern AI agent on the fly to further lucubrate public utility company so long as the necessary API keys are usable to it . An AI agent market is also part of the plan , slated for launch next calendar month .
Elsewhere , they ’re leaning into the approximation of the AI assistant as a shopping financial aid and personal aide memoire — meaning the exploiter could , for example , get help to research possible purchase or post the AI notes on thing it require it to remember on their behalf — storing the information for succeeding recall while the user can be good in the cognition that these personal snippets are not being fed back to some data minelaying giant ’s business concern empire in the swarm .
The AI assistant software program does not stand alone ; the “ Jolla with Venho ” team has beendeveloping proprietary AI hardware over the retiring twelvemonth — tech we’vepreviously mention to as “ AI agents in a loge ” — which is also aimed at bringing to life this vision of extremely personalized AI convenience without privacy craft - offs .
Their glide slope relies upon leveraging small AI model that can be topically hosted to bring off many of the information tasks for the drug user , along with preprocessing and a vector data - bag that unify data point from their linked accounts to speed up the drug user experience at the query level .
The incoming AI help software system is stand for to baby-sit atop all this back - death data instrumentation and swimmingly automate switching between different AI agents , as user demands require .
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Cutting through the noise
Giving TechCrunch an exclusive prevue of the incoming AI helper technical school here at the Mobile World Congress ( MWC ) trade show in Barcelona , co - founder Antti Saarnio and Jolla old stager Sami Pienimäki argue there ’s an unfolding startup opportunity to develop — fundamentally — a decentralised AI operating system to disrupt cloud giants as generative AI continue to rewrite the rules around computer software and how we use it .
They point to their farsighted account of mobile hardware and group O growing ( with Sailfish ) and Android app integration — indicate this gives them a stage up in such a slipstream .
“ There ’s monolithic cognitive load coming at the minute because of AI . And I think we postulate assistance to filter things , ” says Saarnio , suggesting the AI assistant will become an essential tool to cut through the noise . “ It ’s your own tool — you own that shaft . ”
The AI assistant computer software — which is being showcased under the brand name Mindy , an avatar with a distaff look and feel , but which drug user will be able-bodied to customize to their own sense of taste — is launching imminently as a subscription service hosted on a individual cloud control by Venho.ai .
In a demonstration of it , TechCrunch fancy Saarnio interacting with the AI supporter running on his laptop — typing query through a schmoose - style interface and getting replies back as text and speech . He asked what email he has , have email - related tasks added to a to - do list ; and he got the AI to book a coming together slot . ( notice : It ’s also potential to speak enquiry to the assistant . )
There was initially a bit of a pause before the first response came back but the keep an eye on responses were faster . Saarnio also noted that they ’re working on further acceleration and optimisation — with the aim of getting the reception charge per unit down to one second .
A World Wide Web search query he tried to demonstration — asking the AI to get info about a fellowship — fail to return the sought for data but Saarnio subsequently said this was because the laptop computer was not connect to the internet , meaning the Google Search API did not function .
In accession to offering the AI help via its own individual cloud , the tool will next calendar month be made uncommitted on the Mind2 Jolla AI machine — which the squad has been shipping to early adoptive parent since January .
This means Mind2 owners will be able-bodied to self host the AI assistant on this personal server - style ironware — jettisoning the motivation to use any third - party swarm military service to concur their data ( even the “ private swarm ” that ’s pitched by Venho ) . Certainly when it do to enquiry that can be track down on the small AI models housed inside the gadget — which admit DeepSeek ’s 1.5 - billion parameter model and Meta ’s Llama 1 - billion parametric quantity model , per Saarnio .
“ It ’s capable of sympathy and give way you proper answers — what emails you have mystify , what is the content — then it does n’t make massive mistakes . But if you give it a Brobdingnagian setting window [ such as uploading a magnanimous document to enquiry ] it get disjointed , ” he enjoin , explaining when the twist might need to lead to someone else ’s swarm for resolution .
More processing - acute queries can require the tech to tap into large words model ( LLMs ) — where privacy promises must fall away since the substance abuser ’s data will be expose to someone else ’s T&Cs . But by having a colloquial assistant sitting atop the arrangement , the suggestion is that users will be able to instruct the AI how they need it to work for them — such as , say , distinguish the assistant never to send any health entropy to Master of Laws — further customizing the experience to their comfortableness geographical zone .
Early - shuttlecock pricing for the AI Assistant ( first 1,000 user ) is jell at $ 10 per calendar month ( after a 14 - day barren trial ) — but the final price will be around $ 20 per calendar month , per Saarnio . ( For those buying the Jolla hardware too the 16 GB RAM , 128 GB memoryMind 2device has a full price - tag of € 699 , though the team is still extend a deduction price for former adopters . )
In the class since we last got up close and personal with Jolla ’s computer hardware the now - transport gadget has turn in sizing . Per Pienimäki , the increase in its footprint ( it ’s now about the size of it of a small , lumpy paperback ) is mostly down to heat management requirements — with the box now throng a larger heatsink and other heat direction components alongside processing hardware .
Final meeting place of the kit is being done in Finland , at a former Nokia facility in Salo , he also note , which at least holds up an tempting possibility that the reborn startup ’s efforts might have the prospect to revive former Finnish tech resplendency . ( Reminder : The Sailfish OS was developed as a crotch of an abandoned Nokia software projection by ex - staffers . )
So far , around 500 Mind2 devices have been send to early adopters — with the squad tapping into interest group from the Sailfish enthusiast community . Saarnio state they ’re also vex utilitarian feedback and avail with hemipteron fixes from these early adopter through a Discord community of interests . “ I would recommend that to any startup , ” he notes of the approaching .
And while they ’re in the commercial enterprise of selling the kit and associated services themselves , they also trust there ’s an interesting B2B opportunity that ’s just getting started .
Indeed , Saarnio says it was some telcos who figure the potency for the computer hardware to pop the question a home hub - flair root that could form well for multiple phratry members living under one cap — in other words , “ It ’s like a individual Amazon Alexa , ” as Pienimäki puts it — which in bout encouraged the team to speed up development of Mindy “ to show the top executive of conversation of AI , ” Saarnio adds .
