Smartphones can distract you with a dizzying array of apps and a constant stream of notifications. A new app called Poppy aims to organize the clutter by bringing together calendar, email, messaging, and other sources into one dashboard.
The idea, according to the company’s website, is that “Poppy pays attention so you don’t have to.”
Users can link different services to Poppy, such as email, calendar and at least their location. Poppy then uses that data along with artificial intelligence to guess what’s important to you right now based on what’s going on in your life. At a high level, this means you can open the Poppy app or glance at its widgets to see what meetings or tasks you have on your plate.
But Poppy’s strongest feature is probably its proactive suggestions.
For example, if Poppy has access to your calendar and sees that you have a 30-minute gap while you’re near a park, he might suggest you take a break and go for a walk before your next appointment. And if you’re planning to have brunch with a friend who mentioned their food preferences in a previous conversation, you can take this information into account when suggesting restaurants.
You can also send questions or requests to Poppy, as if you had a personal assistant working on your behalf. Poppy can track your flights and alert you of changes, or nudge you when it’s time to take your medication.
Poppy maker Sai Kambampatti says he has always been fascinated by human-computer interaction, having earned a master’s degree in computer science with a specialization in the field. Kampambatti, who was previously a software engineer at AI hardware startup Humane, said he has seen firsthand how people are trying to rethink how we engage with technology.
“I’ve always been interested in challenging what computers can do, especially the idea of ambient computing and computers that can proactively sense what you need and anticipate your needs,” Kampambatti told TechCrunch. “This is something I found very exciting. I felt like with all the AI technology we see around us, embarking on something like this has never been more possible.”
At launch, Poppy works with everyday apps like Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Gmail, Outlook, iCloud Mail, Apple Health, Reminders, Contacts, iMessage, WhatsApp, and more. (It uses a Mac app to access iMessage, which could be an issue later because Apple doesn’t generally allow third-party apps to access its messaging service.) It also works with apps like Uber and Instacart, and Kambampati plans to expand support for others over time.
The company says that users’ data is encrypted when stored in its database, and it has a no-data retention policy enabled when it uses cloud-based LLMs for its suggestions. However, over time, Kambambati wants to switch to using native on-device AI models as the technology advances.
“Hopefully, my dream is – in two to three years from now, when our machines have much more powerful computing, and the models get smaller, cheaper and better – eventually we can run all of this on our own hardware, and there won’t even be a need to hit the servers,” he says.
Poppy’s four-person San Francisco-based team is backed by $1.25 million in seed funding led by Kindred Ventures, with several angels also participating, including DeepMind’s Logan Kilpatrick.
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