Bill Gates-Funded Tech Company Launches AI Chatbot Designed to Learn Users' Preferences Over Time
A startup tech company funded by billionaire Bill Gates is launching a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence to help users choose entertainment based on their own perferences.
An exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal on Thursday said the entertainment-recommending chatbot will be called Pix.
Running on OpenAI’s “natural-language processing technology,” Pix will use the user preferences it learns over time to recommend books, films, podcasts and television programs the user may like.
The chatbot receives real-time updates from entertainment sources like Hulu, Max and Netflix, the outlet reported.
According to the Journal, it will be free for users. The report did not detail how Likewise, the company launching Pix, planned to monetize its product.
“That personal agent aspect is going to be a big part of what we see people doing in the next couple years,” Likewise CEO Ian Morris told the Journal. “That’s something we’re looking to really define.”
The company will do that, in part, using “600 million consumer data points” already in its possession as a starting point in helping consumers identify media that might interest them.
Steaming services like Amazon and Netflix already include recommendations, of course, based on user activity on their sites. Pix’s offering will be different because users will be able to text or email for recommendations across numerous services.
No release date for the chatbot’s app was reported, but a search of the Apple Store made Thursday afternoon did not return any relevant results.
Microsoft, founded by Gates in 1975, has already invested billions of dollars in OpenAI since its 2022 launch, giving it an advantage over competitors through early access to some of the startup’s new technology.
Likewise joins numerous other companies launching new AI-powered tools this year, and the Journal predicted that the company might struggle to differentiate itself among a crowded field.
That’s compounded by the challenge of actually proving the chatbot works as intended. Chatbots have already earned a reputation for providing false information, a term sometimes called “hallucinating” in the field.
“We’re going to have those same challenges,” Morris admitted, “and I think that’s something that is going to be part of any of these AI services for a while.”
Nonetheless, as long ago as March, Gates himself pronounced that “the Age of AI had begun.”
“I knew I had just seen the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface,” Gates wrote in March after seeing ChatGPT “ace a college-level biology exam.”
Gates made news in August when it was reported that he put almost $100 million into stock of the company that owns the decisively boycotted Bud Light, but the huge investment was a move a former executive of that very beer company thinks is a bad idea.
“Bill Gates is definitely making a mistake,” Anson Frericks, former Anheuser-Busch president of operations and now president of Strive Asset Management, said of the move.
“Earlier this year, he already made a $900 million mistake when he invested into one of Anheuser-Busch’s largest rivals, Heineken. He did that earlier this year. And since that investment, Heineken’s down about 10 percent, whereas the broader markets are up 10 percent.
“So, if I was looking for advice on investing to software companies, tech companies, I might go to Bill Gates. But if you’re looking at the beer industry, he doesn’t have a great track record of investing in winners at this point.”
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