Marvel
- Microsoft, Meta, and more are touting AI assistants that are far more advanced than Siri and Alexa.
- They are starting to put AI tools in people's pockets that feel a lot like Tony Stark's Jarvis.
- These AI assistants have the potential to deal with tedious digital tasks, or "crapmin."
There's an AI vision of the future that's starting to emerge, which looks a lot like something straight out of Iron Man's Stark Industries. Let's call it AI's Jarvis moment.
From Microsoft to Meta, tech companies leading the charge in AI are starting to make clear what the future of AI looks like to them. Instead of buzzy chatbots that go "brrr," they're promising powerful tools that serve as do-it-all assistants like Iron Man's trusty AI companion.
Microsoft introduced Copilot last month as an "everyday AI companion" spanning multiple devices, one that promises to be at your every beck and call through what CEO Satya Nadella described as a "single unified experience centered around you."
Mark Zuckerberg is attempting to pull off something similar at Meta by resuscitating his struggling augmented-reality glasses idea as AI-powered Ray-Bans, which will start giving you information, writing text, and more upon hearing the magic words "Hey Meta."
"If you want to build an AI assistant that really has access to all of the inputs that you have as a person, glasses are probably the way that you want to build that," Zuckerberg said during Meta's Connect conference last week.
Tony Stark's Jarvis was, of course, an AI assistant who helped Marvel's ironclad superhero defend Earth against universe-level threats – who eventually became the vibranium-based android Vision. Jarvis was also a trusty companion who managed digital chores, offered advice, and managed online systems with ease.
At a time when more of people's everyday life is consumed online by tiresome and dull tasks we'll call "crapmin," a Jarvis-like tool could confirm AI as the superpower tech companies so desperately want it to be.
Sorting out the 'crapmin'
Digital life in 2023 can be pretty time-consuming. Working through endless work and personal emails, managing bills and appointments, trawling through clunky websites for vacation planning, and setting reminders for key dates can all take more time and energy than necessary.
Tech companies have made efforts to release products, which aim to solve some of these issues, like Alexa or Siri. But they've often felt either gimmicky, limited in scope, or outright amateurish. Siri often struggles to understand context, while Alexa has previously been described as "a colossal failure of imagination."
In the age of generative AI that's taken shape this year, tech companies are starting to see the very real potential for AI to be your reliable Jarvis.
In Microsoft's case, Copilot will have a place across its full suite of products, whether that's helping to make coding more efficient with GitHub, boosting productivity during use of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, or enhancing the search experience through Bing.
In a blogpost announcing Copilot, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, wrote how the AI assistant could use your search history to personalize responses for you.
For instance, "If you've used Bing to track your favorite soccer team, next time you're planning a trip it can proactively tell you if the team is playing in your destination city," Mehdi noted. Copilot will aim to help with things like shopping too, by providing "more tailored recommendations."
During Meta Connect, updated smart glass was presented as an "advanced conversational assistant" that does your bidding by simply responding to your voice.
Here's a scenario Meta offers to showcase the handiness of an AI assistant. Say you're in a group chat with friends attempting to plan a trail walk in California. Meta's AI assistant "surfaces options directly in the chat, so you can decide as a group which location to explore."
These use cases, in effect, makes AI much more than assistants: they hold the potential to become a trusty superpower that can be depended on to understand your personal needs before helping clean up a mess and make hard work seem like no sweat at all.
There is a chance that none of this pans out. Existing AI tools like ChatGPT have, at times, sparked concern over inaccuracies and hallucinations, as well as deeper issues around biases resulting from data.
Letting an AI assistant take care of all aspects of our "crapmin" will require a lot of confidence in its capabilities. After all, a powerful ally like Jarvis harbors the potential of turning into an evil Ultron at any moment.