# Instinct AI is For Real. What You Need to Know.

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUAsaprJ66s
Duration: 28 min
Language: English
Words: 5501
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/mUAsaprJ66s

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[0:00] Yeah, you've probably heard of Instinct AI by now. You know, the invite only personal agent app that's raising money at a rumored $10 billion. Well, what does it look like inside? And what are some use cases? And what are some crazy things that you can do with it? Like, you know, saving money on your phone bills or getting a visa approved in a foreign country with only three messages. Well, today me and my friend Remy are going to show you the inside of Instinct AI, the secretive inviteonly [music] app. We're going to show you how it works, where it shines, and where it could use a little bit of help. The

[0:35] TLDDR is it really does feel like the personal agent app for everyone, including your mom. I've got a few extra invites, so if you like, comment, and subscribe to the channel, I'll give it out to some random people. And I hope someone from Instinct watches this uh and just piles me with a thousand invites that I can give to everyone. So, let's get those likes, comments, and subscribes going, and I'll see you by

[0:58] the end of the episode. [music]

[1:07] AI with Rey's here. By the end of this episode, what are people going to learn? I'm going to give you an overview on the new agent product instinct that has just come out. We're going to go through the good and the bad. I think they've done a lot of things well and some things not so well. So yeah, by the end you're gonna get a full overview on the product as a whole and how you can be using it

[1:28] within your life. So different use cases, what you like about it, what you don't like about it, uh why it's interesting, why you should pay, you know, pay attention to it or not. 100% by the end of this people I think you know what I hope Remy is that people just don't understand what Instinct AI is and how to use it but also just it gets people's creative juices flowing around personal agents in general 100%. I think there's some cool lessons to be taken to apply to your own business with how the founders like rolled it out, how they've been um how they built it with like network effects,

[2:02] some cool things like that as well. Cool. Let's let's get into it. Sweet. So, I just wanted to touch as well on like what I think it did really, really well and then what I think it did really, really poorly. So, what I think it did well is the right amount of dialogue, not too verbose, used reactions really, really well, and it understands them, too. Like, I could thumbs up react to messages. It would ask me for for approval. I could just thumbs up react and it would take that as a yes. Uh, the utilizes Apple iMessage features really, really well, like the the loud messages, the confetti

[2:33] reactions. It can listen to your voice notes that you send through Apple messages. And this one, this one was like genuinely blew my mind. It was I I sent it a game pigeon game. Greg, do you know game pigeon? Like the the um iMessage games? I can say I do. So I feel like I should. You like this was a thing like back when I was like younger. You could send it's like an app called game pigeon. You can send games. You play games through iMessage with people. So, I sent Instinct uh this cuppong one and sent it off to it and and it came back

[3:08] and started playing the game with me. I was like genuinely gobsmacked. We'll see if it does it here. [laughter] Waiting for opponent. Give it a Give it like a minute there. Yeah. Straight away. Back on your table. God. So, you can see I was I I was playing cuppong and it's nailing it. That's crazy. Just absolutely cleaned up. And then now it was my turn to play back. So, that was that was like a really really nice touch. Like I'm trying to I'm imagining that the Instinct team would like would have gone through so much extra dev to get these game pigeon games to work. I

[3:54] they have to have actually coded that. I can't imagine that it's just genuinely doing that doing it itself. So that was super impressive. Memory was was cool. So um when I asked it a question in the chat about trying to get my monitor box wrapped when it filled out the visa on arrival card, I noticed that it put in a thing about like how many suitcases and it added in like the monitor that was being checked into oversize. So little things like that. I noticed that it would pull things and ideas that I'd said earlier that I'd even forgotten about and pull them into current conversations. So it did that really

[4:24] really well. Productivity uh as you saw it just like reaches out and um when I asked it to find me a place I ran a desk in Bali, it messaged me the next morning and said by the way if you wanted it same day the cut off is 12 so order it this morning. Little things like that were really nice. Overall the simplicity. So this ties into this one below is it's basically just open claw

[4:44] or Hermes agent but for regular people. And I think that Hermes Agent and Open Claw, as great as they are, they keep getting further and further out of reach for normal people because the power users all love them and they need to keep releasing new features to keep up with what the power users want. But every new feature they add to cater to that group moves it further out of reach for a normal person who doesn't really understand agents very well and is trying to use them to take tasks off their plate. So, I think that this is just like yeah, they've done it really really well as like a a personal

[5:17] assistant agent for like mass market general consumers. I think they've done it absolutely flawlessly. And also to the use cases, none of them individually are life-changing. They just took like 10 15 minutes off my plate here and there, but add that up and I can see it like genuinely being really useful, saving me hours over the course of the week. Uh, I also thought, Greg, I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, but the invite only approach that they took I thought was really, really

[5:42] interesting. Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of Clubhouse, like the early days of clubhouse. Clubhouse. Oh, man. Oh, man. Remy, Remy, Remy. So in 2020 there was a twi basically Twitter spaces app that uh was invite only and you'd go into these like rooms and like Naval was speaking and Elon Musk would be in rooms and like it was but it was invite only. Um, and they ended up raising money at like, I don't know, $4 billion valuation and it became this thing that, you know, got really big. That being said, you know, it never

[6:29] lived up to the $4 billion valuation. So, I think the question a lot of people are going to have for this is, is this a Club Host moment or is Instinct going to live up? There's it's rumored that it's raising money at a $10 billion valuation right now. That's crazy. That's absolutely insane. So, I don't know. Who knows? But I think that the way that they did the invite was was pretty clever cuz it made like it just if I if I had instant access to it and I probably wouldn't have even signed up because it's just every every new post you scroll past on X is

[7:03] introducing X agent, introducing Y agent. It's like but but the way they did it was super secretive and like I couldn't get access as soon as I got a code it was like oh I'm invited. So they they say they're rolling it out like that for compute but I kind of think that it was a marketing play as well which is cool. And then Greg the trusted person network that they released or are releasing is really really cool. So uh Noah the the founder tweeted this I think yesterday talking about the trusted person network. So uh they are basically releasing this feature where you can uh add other people's instincts

[7:38] as an like an allow list into your instinct. So you can have like instinct to instinct communication which I think is like an incredible example of network effects if they can get on it early and like capture a good portion of the market. I think that that could work really really well for them. Yeah. I think what when I read this it really what really blew my mind is that it's the equivalent of net network effects but for the agentic era like I think yeah you know a lot of people weren't thinking about network effects in this way and I think that yeah when when you

[8:15] read the tweet it makes absolut it you know makes so much sense right of course you want your agent to coordinate with other agents to get stuff done um and I think a lot of people have questions now around, you know, especially in the startup ideas and and just ventureback startup world is like do, you know, where where are the moes of these companies? And I think you're going to start seeing more and more

[8:39] companies do stuff like this. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. I mean, it' be interesting to see if they end up opening it. So, you can have like your your Muse agents talk to Instinct agents or whether they keep it a closed network. I'm really curious to see what like what route they go down. But I think this is just like a really really

[8:54] really cool feature. Uh the other thing was yeah super fast computer use like I I I think a lot of these use cases you could make an argument that you could do it with Grockbot but I find that the Grockbot computer use is really really slow and I found that the uh instincts computer use was just super fast and seamless. You can't even see it. I'm assuming it's using a computer in the back end. Uh, and then like tying off, I think that it just fills the hole of a personal assistant AI within my stack like really really nicely. I don't really see myself using this for anything business work

[9:26] coding related, but just for haircut bookings, like restaurant bookings, making plans. I think that that's it's going to be really really helpful. And I noticed too, they also added in Yeah, they also added in this feature where every Instinct now has its own email address. So my Instinct's email address is like Remy and my last name. com. So now it can use that inbox to to sort out bookings and do its like PA tasks for you without clocking up your

[9:55] inbox, which I think was really cool. Also, one of the features they said was you can just loop it into an email thread. So if you're in an email thread and like it involves a task that you want install, you can just kind of forward it the thread and it can be looped in and uh finish it off for you, which I thought was a really really cool

[10:10] feature too. So is your recommendation for business tasks use Hermes, OpenClaw, Grockbot. And then for personal tasks, use Instinct. Yeah, that's how I'm that's how I'm rocking it right now. I I'm using like I'm I'm loving Codeex at the moment. I think they've done an incredible job. So I pretty much keep a lot of my work stuff within split between like Codex, Claude, Code, Grockbot, and then this is just fills the hole perfectly for personal assistant AI. So yeah, that's exactly how I'm using it. Um, one note too on like the the open clone her for regular people. Like I set up a Hermes agent for my mom so she could just have

[10:46] a personal agent to to use for this kind of stuff, but it still involved like I had to set up a VPS with like Docker and then set it up for her. Uh, I then had to get her to use Composio so she could connect her tools up. The gateway crashes here and there and then it needs an update. Just a pain in the ass. And then like I have to manage that too and there's no way that she was going to set that up for herself. So, I think that this is just I think these simpler agent products for for the mass consumer market um especially like what they've

[11:15] done here and how they've built this, they've done it really really well. The the stuff they did poorly was I'm not going to put down like some of those issues with ordering food and grabs in Indonesia to Instinct. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I I think that security and privacy is something that I've seen as major cons to Instinct. There's a tweet from Cla where she's talking about how she disconnected her bot from Google at 11:00 a.m. but got a summary of her emails at 12:00. So, it's obviously indexed them and kept copies of all her emails, which is a big concern. Another

[11:47] one from Peter Yang as well where he said, "Yeah, same thing indexing and retaining all his emails without their permission." And people also too, I saw in the comments pointed out uh things too about in instincts terms and conditions. they've have some really uh concerning things about retaining and keeping control of some of your private data like emails. So, if that's a big concern for you, I think it's definitely something you need to um yeah, look into

[12:15] with with Instinct. I mean, yeah, of course it's a concern. You know what I mean? Like I think like in an ideal world, Instinct is by Apple and I just have way more trust in Apple than a startup just by definition. But the reality is Apple is not there yet. And the reality is this product could save me hours a week. And it's the hours a week that of stuff that I hate doing. And so it frees up my mind so I can build my own ideas and build other stuff that's actually high leverage. So it's one of those things where, you know, obviously I have no affiliation and you

[12:57] have no affiliation with Instinct. Yeah. Not at all. Um, but like we we we like tools that help us make our lives easier. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. [clears throat] Uh, like this is definitely going to be a tool that I continue to use for sure. Uh, I I can see it definitely fitting into my stack super super nicely. So, uh, as soon as I signed in with Instinct, it I can't remember the exact flow, but it was you you sign in with a phone number and then straight away it kind of got me into iMessage and then this was like a a message that it fired off as part of its onboarding. And that

[13:33] was the first thing that like blew me away is how simple the onboarding was. I think that's where a lot of AI products lack, especially if they're trying to go for like the mass consumer general market. The onboarding is not straightforward and clear enough. People underestimate how I'm not going to say like how dumb the average person is, but I think that as you know, we we're in a bubble, Greg, and this stuff's like super simple for us, but for people like my mom who's super smart in like other aspects of life, uh, she would just struggle to understand like basic AI stuff that you and I take for granted. So, that was the

[14:05] first thing it did super super well is is simple, clear onboarding. There's no concept of MCPs, CLI, markdown files. It was just log in with the phone number, bang, you're in. And then this Oh, the first thing as well is it utilizes the native Apple iMessage things really well. Like uh these little confetti animations, it sends those natively. And I've noticed that throughout my entire conversation, if there's something like important, it'll use like the loud effect and it will make the message go big. So, I just thought that was a

[14:35] really really nice touch. So, it feels it feels human. And even I mean we'll get into it later, but like when you when you read the text, it really does feel like it's a personal assistant that is a human being. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Uh and then off the rip, it's straight away like sends me

[14:51] pictures of like here's some use cases. Here's what I can do for you. And then straight away it like demo some really cool things like booking flights, uh, check you into your flight, you know, ordering food, cancelling subscriptions, um, booking movie tickets, you know, adding stuff to calendar. Another cool one here, I noticed that it shows off

[15:10] you can send voice notes, which is cool. Uh, and then just straight away like I'm running an invite only beta program. Here's your link. I also thought it'd be cool to I'm going to open the platform that goes alongside the the agent view. So this is the platform that ships alongside the agent view that we get. So just super simple workspace. It's like here are your contact methods. I've set up both iMessage and WhatsApp to chat to it on. And then connectors. I've connected up my email accounts and then Slack granola uh and then link for payments which I which I'll get into in a minute. But I didn't bother connecting

[15:49] up other things like Outlook and Linear and these other like GitHub and stuff because I like I see this fits really nicely into my stack as a personal assistant agent. Uh and I think that they've marketed it quite well as that and like Noah in his announcement post was pretty clear. He's like focusing on building the best like personal assistant AI product. Then the next thing I noticed is it's got a vault where you can save in things like login for different websites. uh cards as well which I've given it two credit cards and then addresses you can save in there as well as well as like phones um and then

[16:23] preferences. I think this is just for you know signin methods and some data controls. There's a couple of other features as well. They've rolled out a trusted instinct agent network which I'll go into later as well but that isn't showing up for me there cuz they're rolling out these features just to certain users at a time like slow dripping them out. So, there's a few things that I don't quite have unlocked yet, but the the interface is super simple. Like I can just, you know, like I when I think about this product and think about like the general everyday consumer, I just think about like my mom

[16:54] and how like amazing this would be for for her and her life. So, I can see people like that just being able to have this bookmarked and then easily just connect out whatever tools they need. I can't really see many people needing more than an email and maybe some kind of payment method just for like everyday assistant type tasks. So yeah, pretty cool this little workspace. I think they've done that really well. Back into the agent session. So she just said like I don't know what tasks to give you and it started to flag some things from my granola and my uh emails. But I didn't

[17:29] really want to go down the work route here. flag like things related to to my work stuff, but I really like clearly had in mind like I see this filling the role of a personal AI assistant for scheduling like appointments, nothing like business or workrelated or coding related tasks. So, uh I then had the idea I wanted to I wanted to like get a a wavy perm I had like dead straight

[17:52] hair. So, as you can see, got it done. Looks pretty good. So I messaged instinct and I was like can you message this place in Bali on WhatsApp asking if they do perms and then straight away it couldn't message the the account on WhatsApp so it just sort of directed me to do it myself uh which I like first little thing where I felt a little bit of friction and then I asked it to find me places in Copenhagen and it went away and like started researching a bunch of spots and then it pulled in reviews and it said want me to check who's got openings next And I asked it to go and

[18:26] find some photos which it sent me. It sent me some more as well down here. Uh and then I asked it for some more options. It just did a bunch of research mainly looking at like reviews and then it I as I picked one and asked it to check their availability and it tried to book but then uh it ran into the wall of it needed a Danish phone number. So then it just emailed them. Uh, and then I said,

[18:54] "Yeah, please book the Saturday spot." It it emailed them and then it just said, "Okay, great. I've emailed them." Cuz I couldn't book without a Danish phone number. And it's like, "I'll just ping you when they reply." And then, uh, straight away it just said, I mean, this was like a few hours later, it just reached out and was like, "Confirm you're booked." Um, I heard back from them, which is I wonder if they they know that an AI agent booked it or do they think it's a

[19:21] human being? I think they would have thought it was a human being. I remember I actually I went and looked at the email it sent cuz I was curious like how the the writing style was and I remember I don't have it up in front of me right now, but I remember being pretty impressed with how

[19:32] it wrote. It sounded very very human. Uh, so that was the first thing. And like to be fair, I did a lot more back and forth here than I needed because when I'm trying out new agent products, it's like a bit of a a teething process in the beginning to try and like feel feel it out and see where it gets stuck and where it doesn't. So there are lots of times when because they've made it so simple, you can't see what the agent's doing or what it's working on. So the times when it would go silent for 5 minutes and I would follow up go like,

[20:01] "Hey, did you get that?" and and and it was working away in the background, but now I've started to realize that when it just goes silent, like it's not broken. It's just it's handling it. So now I just feel more confident when I just give it a task and I can just put my phone away and not worry and it'll get come back like 10 15 minutes later sometimes. So yeah, booked me in. That was the first task. Is it is it is it booked in a haircut, which was cool. And then I asked it while I was sitting there in the in the haircut chair about

[20:30] booking a restaurant for three. So it went in and checked what availabilities are open for for Bro Central. And then it pulled in a couple of times and I just said can we book a table for 7:45 and then it says come back. It says all stage just needs a card on file for the no-show hold. And this was when I was

[20:48] like all right We're getting real. We're getting into the uh we're giving the agent a card. And it just sent me straight away. It sent me this link to just add in a card, like card details, and that took me to this page here. I mean, it no longer works, but literally just was an instinct back to that workspace I showed just before, but it had a field for name, card number, um, expiry, and then CV. So, the way I did this is obviously I'm not completely negligent. So, I you I use Wise for like my banking. So, I just created a new Wise card. you can spin up like new

[21:21] digital cards really really easy for like Apple Pay and so I spun up a new digital card set a daily spending limit on it for about $500 and cuz you know if like the agent goes nuts and if the max it spends is $500 it's not the end of the world for me. So um did that and then I just gave it the card details for that daily limited card. So then I just kind of felt a little bit more comfortable cuz like the the blast radius would be contained and then uh straight away here added it and it it reacts to messages which I find

[21:54] quite cool there sometimes as well like it I find it has a really nice balance of knowing uh when to reply and when to just react to stuff. So sometimes like it doesn't always give you a reply. It'll just react which is I think like a nice touch because I think Greg uh as you know a lot of these models now when you're talking to them they're like overly verbo verbose and just like word

[22:14] vomit back at you. So exactly I mean again goes back to being like human you know a human being knows when to react to something and when to write. And I think that's like the big aha moment that people are having with instinct is it just it's scary. It's scary human. It's like it it's so it's so human it's

[22:36] scary. Yeah. Yeah. 100% agreed. So that was really seamless there. That booking was like I was pretty impressed. I mean obviously I had to stop to add the card but it just straight away checked they got a availability. Bang. Added the card straight away. Booked it and I had the confirmation email come through. So that was that was that was really really cool. And then I started just um added it into my calendar and then I asked it again for some more restaurant bookings uh the next night which was cool. Uh and then this was this was where I like started to really push the boundaries. I

[23:08] I asked it cuz I was in Copenhagen then heading to Bali for 3 weeks. So I this is the message I sent it right here. It was just can you please sort out my Bali visa? I'm an Australian citizen heading there on this date until the end of the month just on visa on arrival. And it came back and it did just it gave me a little checklist of everything that it needed. And then uh the next thing I did was I asked to sign me up to Emirates Skywards as well because you can get free Wi-Fi on Emirates flights if you're signed up to Skywards. So two like gen

[23:42] generally uh genuinely like useful things off my plate there and and quite risky things with the visa too. So sent those off uh came back then it asked for a photo of my passport which I willingly obliged. Uh so sent a photo of my passport. It said um passport's good and then it says like straight away that also gives me the date of birth for the Skyward sign up which was like cool. So it's it's like working on both those tasks for me. and then gave me the list of of what else it needed. I sent it a photo of me [laughter] and then um just asked it like you know

[24:18] arriving on the 9th but if my flight gets delayed is that okay and then asked it to find the address um from Airbnb as well. So yeah, delay is no problem. Anyway, moving on. It just started to go through getting what it needed from me. Here we go. So here's here's where it had everything it needed and then straight away it sent me my visa on arrival. my PDF and I was like pretty pretty blown away by that as soon as it like had what it needed because like there was a bit of back and forth because I hadn't like got my together. But uh once it had what it

[24:47] needed, it sorted the visa out for me. One of the questions it asked me for the arrival card, it needed to know like what countries I had been in the last 3 months and it went through my emails and Airbnb receipts and it literally gave me a list. It was uh said to me, uh I need a list of everywhere you've been in 3 months. Here's what I've got so far. Did I miss anything? and it got everything spot on. So, that was cool. And then it uh and when I got to when I got to Bley, I was like sweating a little bit because as you know, like they uh they don't

[25:19] mess around with with immigration stuff. Like you you'll be deported from there pretty quick if you um if you get something wrong. So, I was rocked up to the gate and scan my passport like fingers crossed hoping that everything like did that like I placed my trust in instinct to do this for me. So, I put my passport down and then the gate like we did a little like beep scanned opened

[25:40] and yeah, it was a it was a cool moment. Totally. It's a it's a lot of trust to put in instinct and I bet you those immigration guards haven't heard about instinct, you know? It's not like you be like, I had instinct to it. Yeah, there was no like there was no uh um yeah, pushing the blame onto someone

[25:59] else there. All right. Well, I think that's it. Um, Remy, thank you for coming on and breaking it down for us. Like always, I'll I'll include links for where you can follow AI with Remy in the show notes, in the description. Um, anything you want to leave people with, Remy? I think this is a great one to get your non-technical those people that you have in your life where you are like super in love with using agents and you do everything with agents and and build amazing products and everyone has those people in their life that aren't quite hooked on it yet. They haven't had that

[26:37] aha moment and I think the instinct can be the one to give it to them. So, if you manage to get access, I think this is a great one to share and get your non-technical uh people who aren't using agents properly yet, get them on it. So, send them this episode so they can

[26:53] learn about it. It's still invite only. I've got about I think seven invites. So, if you comment and like this video, I'll give it away to some random people. Um, and uh, you know, I wish I had 7,000 cuz I feel like we're going to get a ton of comments and likes, but you know, hopefully if this gets a ton of likes, comments, and stuff like that, the Instinct team will reach out and we'll we'll we'll try to get more uh more invites out. So, Remy, thanks again. You're a legend. You breaking it

[27:25] down and uh I'll see you next time. Peace.

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