Poppy debuts a proactive AI assistant to help organize your digital life

Smartphones can be distracting with their dizzying array of apps and constant stream of notifications. A new app called Poppy aims to organize the chaos by combining your calendar, email, messages and other sources into a single dashboard.

The idea, per the company’s website, is that “Poppy pays attention so you don’t have to.”

Users can connect various services to Poppy’s app, like their email, calendar, and, at a minimum, their location. Poppy then uses that data along with AI 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 Poppy’s app or glance at its widgets to see the meetings or tasks you have on your plate.

But Poppy’s most powerful feature is likely its proactive suggestions.

For instance, if Poppy has access to your calendar and sees that you have a 30-minute gap while you’re near a park, it could suggest you take a break and go for a walk before your next appointment. And if you’re planning a brunch with a friend who mentioned their food preferences in a previous communication, it could factor in that information when suggesting restaurants.

You can also message Poppy with questions or requests, almost as if you had a personal assistant working on your behalf. Poppy can track your flights and alert you to changes, or nudge you when it’s time to take your medication.

Poppy’s maker, Sai Kambampati, says he’s always been fascinated by human-computer interaction, having earned his Master’s degree in Computer Science with a specialization in this area. Previously a software engineer at the AI hardware startup Humane, he said he has seen first-hand how people are trying to rethink how we engage with technology.

“I’ve always been interested in challenging what computers are able to do, especially the idea of ambient computing and computers that can proactively sense what you need and anticipate your needs,” Kambampati told TechCrunch. “That’s something that I found very, very exciting. And I felt like with all the AI technology that we’re seeing around us, it has never been more possible to embark on something like this.”

At launch, Poppy works with everyday apps like Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Gmail, Outlook, iCloud Mail, Apple Health, Reminders, Contacts, iMessage, WhatsApp, and others. (It uses a Mac app to access iMessage, which could later be a problem as Apple generally doesn’t allow third-party apps to access its messaging service.) It also works with apps like Uber and Instacart, and Kambampati plans to extend support to others over time.

The company says users’ data is encrypted when stored in its database, and it has a zero-retention policy enabled when it uses cloud-based LLMs for its suggestions. In time, however, Kambampati would like make the switch to using local, on-device AI models when technology advances.

“My hope, my dream is — within two to three years from now, when our devices have much more powerful compute, and the models get much smaller, cheaper and more high quality — eventually we can have all of this running on our own devices, and there won’t even be a need to hit the servers,” he says.

Poppy’s San Francisco-based team of four is backed by $1.25 million in pre-seed funding led by Kindred Ventures, with various angels also participating, including DeepMind’s Logan Kilpatrick.