Instinct, the buzzy new AI assistant now valued at $2.5 billion, is rolling out a new feature that will allow it to do more on its users’ behalf: it’s giving everyone Instinct email addresses.
The company’s founder Noah Shinn said on Tuesday that the new email addresses let the agent create and run its own accounts without cluttering up users’ inboxes.
Shinn said the idea is to allow Instinct to handle the account sign-up and management for you if it needs to do so for completing tasks that require email, like creating accounts on various services, contacting businesses, and following up on things that need attention.
“For example, Instinct can use its own email to contact a restaurant about a special request, ask a business about availability, or sign up for a service it needs to complete your task,” Shinn wrote on X.
The feature could help make Instinct’s user experience more seamless, as users wouldn’t have to intervene to log in or provide their credentials. (Instinct partnered with 1Password on the latter last week).
But for businesses trying to establish a relationship with their customers, having an AI manage the account would provide a layer of obscurity as to who they’re actually dealing with. Customers, however, may see this as a perk, as many are these days tired of having to turn over their emails and phone numbers just to complete simple tasks or one-offs.
Instinct says it has reserved some email addresses for its earliest users, and others can claim theirs at mail.instinct.com.
Shinn suggested that users could now forward emails to Instinct, too, when it needs certain information to complete a task. For example, if a user wants Instinct to handle a product return on their behalf, they could forward their order confirmation to Instinct’s email address. Then Instinct could contact support, provide the order details, ask whether they wanted a return or replacement, and then come back with the return label to print.
Instinct’s email can also be added to group threads so it can keep track of the information exchanged, or it can be sent a long thread that the user needs to work with, perhaps by asking what decisions still need to be made, which tasks are due when, or other questions.
The bot will check back in with the user when it requires their input, but otherwise will act autonomously.
The feature is one of several recent updates aimed at improving Instinct’s capabilities. It follows the recent partnership with 1Password to help enable logins to users’ existing accounts, as well as a new location-sharing feature that lets Instinct understand where the user is currently, so it can help them find nearby businesses, restaurants, or map routes and itineraries, among other things. Users can also ask questions about their location history, like where they parked or what restaurant they tried last month.
Instinct also partnered with Stripe in August to offer a more seamless payment experience, letting the agent do things like book trips, classes, and appointments, and make purchases.