Big Tech’s Personal AI Agents Are Coming for the to-Do List
Big Tech’s Personal AI Agents Are Coming for the to-Do List
Publish Date: 2026-05-06 17:01:00
Source Domain: www.pymnts.com
Google and Meta are building personal artificial intelligence agents, moving at the same time toward the same idea of an assistant that operates in the background, handles tasks without being asked twice, and gets sharper at anticipating needs the longer it runs.
Google’s version is codenamed Remy, Business Insider reported Tuesday (May 5). It runs inside the Gemini app and connects Google’s broader suite of services, including search, email and calendar. It is described internally as a round-the-clock assistant for work, school and everyday life.
To make room for it, Google shut down its previous AI agent experiment, called Mariner, Monday (May 4), folding that team’s work into the new effort, The Decoder reported Wednesday (May 6). Google declined to comment to the publication.
Meta’s version is called Hatch, The Information reported Tuesday. The company has built practice environments where the assistant learns to navigate real consumer apps, including DoorDash, Etsy, Reddit and others before deployment. Hatch is scheduled for internal testing by the end of June. Meta is also building a shopping tool for Instagram that lets a user tap on a product in a video and complete a purchase without leaving the app, aimed squarely at TikTok Shop.
What They’re Responding To
Both companies are reacting to the same event. In January, an Austrian developer named Peter Steinberger released a free tool called OpenClaw that let people send a message on WhatsApp or Telegram and have software handle the rest, such as booking a meeting, drafting an email or running an errand online while they slept. It became one of the fastest-growing pieces of software in internet history, reaching 3.2 million users in weeks, The Next Web reported Sunday (May 3).
It also had a ceiling. OpenClaw required users to install and run software on their own computer, following instructions that tripped up anyone without a technical background. One of the project’s own team members warned…
