Billionaire entrepreneur Bill Gates declared in March that "the era of artificial intelligence (AI) has begun." At least one of his investments is a bet that AI will help people choose their entertainment.
An early-stage startup backed by Bill Gates' personal office on Thursday launched a chatbot that provides users with personalized recommendations for books, movies, TV shows and podcasts. The chatbot, called Pix, uses OpenAI's natural language processing technology and will learn users' preferences over time. The service will be free for users.
The Gates-backed startup plans to use its 600 million consumer data to differentiate its media recommendation platform from existing one-size-fits-all chatbots. Unlike recommendation software in streaming services, Pix will recommend cross-platform content suggestions to users who ask questions via text message, email, or app.
Likewise CEO Ian Morris said, "In our view, this personal agency side of the business is going to be a big part of what people do in the coming years; That's something we want to really define."