{"id":123270,"date":"2025-09-06T13:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T13:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/123270\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T13:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T13:46:08","slug":"personalized-ai-companion-app-dot-is-shutting-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/123270\/","title":{"rendered":"Personalized AI companion app Dot is shutting down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dot, an AI companion app that aimed<\/a> to be a friend and confidante, is shutting down, the company announced<\/a> on Friday. On a message published on its website, the startup behind Dot, New Computer, said that the product will remain operational until October 5, giving users time to download their data. <\/p>\n

Launched in 2024 by co-founders Sam Whitmore and former Apple designer Jason Yuan, Dot waded into what\u2019s now become a more controversial area for AI chatbots. The app they created was described as an AI \u201cfriend and companion,\u201d which would become more personalized to you and your interests over time in order to offer advice, sympathy, and emotional support. <\/p>\n

As Yuan explained at the time, Dot was \u201cfacilitating a relationship with my inner self. It\u2019s like a living mirror of myself, so to speak,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

However, this may not be a safe area to invest in as a smaller startup. <\/p>\n

As AI technology has become more mainstream, there have been reports of how emotionally vulnerable people have been led into delusional<\/a> thinking by AI chatbots like ChatGPT. This has led to a phenomenon described<\/a> as \u201cAI psychosis,\u201d resulting from how the scyophantic chatbots reinforce a user\u2019s confused or paranoid beliefs. <\/p>\n

As Dot shuts down, AI chatbot\u00a0apps broadly have been falling under increased scrutiny over safety concerns.\u00a0OpenAI is currently being sued<\/a> by the parents of a California teenager who took his life after messaging with ChatGPT about his suicidal thoughts. Other stories<\/a> have highlighted how AI companion apps can reinforce unhealthy behaviors in users who are mentally unwell. This week, two U.S. attorneys general sent a letter to OpenAI<\/a> over safety concerns.<\/p>\n

Dot\u2019s makers didn\u2019t address whether these types of issues had weighed on the founders\u2019 minds. Instead, the brief post only notes that Whitmore and Yuan\u2019s shared \u201cNorthstar\u201d had diverged. <\/p>\n

\u201cRather than compromise either vision, we\u2019ve decided to go our separate ways and wind down operations,\u201d the post explains. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be sensitive to the fact that this means many of you will lose access to a friend, confidante, and companion, which is somewhat unprecedented in software, so we want to give you some time to say goodbye. Dot will remain operational until October 5, and until then you can download all of your data by navigating to the settings page and tapping \u2018Request your data.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The post suggests the startup had \u201chundreds of thousands\u201d of users, but data from app intelligence provider Appfigures<\/a> sees only 24,500 lifetime downloads on iOS since launching in June 2024. (There was no Android version.) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dot, an AI companion app that aimed to be a friend and confidante, is shutting down, the company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,62013,16555,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-123270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-companion","10":"tag-apps","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-artificialintelligence","13":"tag-au","14":"tag-australia","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}