Dot - an AI application designed as a friend and digital experience will officially stop working on October 5, users are advised to download personal data before this time.
Launched in 2024 by Sam Whitmore and Jason Yuan - former Apple designer, Dot aims to build a companion with the ability to personalize, provide advice, empathy and spiritual support for users. Yuan once described Dot as a vivid mirror reflecting his own personality.
However, the field of chatbot companions is increasingly controversial. Many reports show that AI chats can have a negative impact on vulnerable people, leading to a condition known as AI mental disorder. Some serious incidents, such as the OpenAI lawsuit over the death of a teenager in California, have raised concerns about the safety of the application. Last week, two US Attorneys General also sent a letter of questioning to OpenAI on the same issue.
In the announcement, Whitmore and Yuan did not directly mention these risks, only admitting that they were not in the same direction. They affirmed that they did not want to compromise with the original vision and chose to terminate the project.
We understand that many people will lose a friend, a spiritual companion - something unprecedented in the software industry. So we want to give you time to say goodbye, the founding team shared.
Dot once claimed to have hundreds of thousands of users, but data from Appfigures shows that the app has only reached about 24,500 downloads on iOS since its launch in June 2024. The application has never had an Android version.
