X.ai is a technology company that has created an AI scheduling assistant named Amy Ingram. The CEO and founder of x.ai, Dennis R. Mortensen, is determined to “kill the inbox” which inspired the creation of x.ai and Amy (and later, Andrew, the “male” version of Amy). The company has a mission to help both individuals and larger companies reduce the hours dedicated to scheduling meetings, and increase their bottom lines. With the integration of Amy, actual personal assistants can spend more time carrying out human-driven tasks rather than wasting time with tasks that can be handled by a virtual assistant.
X.ai’s Mission
Dennis R. Mortensen first created x.ai in 2014 after he realized he was wasting countless hours scheduling over a thousand meetings one year. In the creation and expansion of the company, the CEO aims to provide quick, seamless, professional, and ‘human-like’ assistance to people trying to schedule meetings both in and out of work.
Mortensen is not interested in increasing the scope of Amy’s work. “We schedule meetings. No more, no less!” he notes. “There’s no interest for our team to fool around with other ideas and have a product that can do seven things…” The CEO has made clear they are interested in designing a vertical AI that is extremely capable at one (very important) task. Other products like Alexa from Echo by Amazon or Siri by Apple are designed to be horizontal AIs where they can assist with many different tasks. Although horizontal AIs are equally important, Mortensen sees Amy as a critical step in the future direction of developing capable vertical AI systems.
Although Amy is often mistaken as being a human, Mortensen notes, “Our goal is not to fool people into thinking that Amy is human. We think we’ve won the game if we can tell you upfront that Amy is a machine but she does her job so well that you treat her like a human.” On x.ai’s about page, the company writes, “Magically schedule meetings. That’s us. That’s all we think about.” The magic, of course, refers to the elite functionality of Amy Ingram, your own virtual personal assistant.
How Does X.ai Work?
To the relief of many hardworking individuals tied to their email inbox, Amy was designed to help reduce the back and forth that comes with scheduling meetings. By cc’ing Amy on emails, the AI can take over for you and email directly with the person you are trying to set up a meeting with. She will take into consideration which times and places you prefer, and after scheduling a time and location, directly mark it into your calendar. Amy is seemingly so real many people have mistaken her for a human, and have sent her flowers and chocolates as a thank you.
There have been some reports of initial difficulty using Amy. The website suggests that to improve Amy’s functionality, users should make it clear to the person they are trying to schedule a meeting with, that they are using a virtual assistant. The AI does best once it understands your preferences, so disclosing these early on makes scheduling less of a hassle.
The Future of x.ai
Currently, x.ai and Amy help to schedule hundreds of thousands of meetings every year. The company initially released Amy to help individuals and was available as a free tester (scheduling up to 5 meetings per month) or for a monthly fee. In early 2017, the company released an additional “Business” edition, which allows companies to customize Amy’s email to fit with their company’s name among other perks. Currently, Amy does not sync with all calendars (like iCloud and Microsoft Exchange), but correcting this is a major goal of the company. In an interview with Business Insider, Mortensen noted that the company has raised $34 million to date, and aims to become a company valued at $100 million by 2017. “We are trying to run towards that [goal] as quick as we can in 2017… It’s hard to imagine we can’t get to a much larger model.”