Palazzo is a lawyer and also runs a law firm in Virginia, USA. Work is already busy enough, but when the new week begins, she still has a list of family matters that cannot be forgotten: Children's school schedule, who picks up children, couple appointments, housework.
AI is helping her handle that task. Every Sunday, an AI tool will read information from emails, work schedules and data provided by Palazzo, then arrange it into a report on the upcoming week. When is the Pilates session? Do the couple have private evenings and need someone to take care of their children? One of the two 9-year-old and 10-year-old daughters has a day off early?
Previously, Palazzo had to remember or check each thing himself. Now, AI gathers everything into a list that is easy to track. "There are too many things to think about when I start a week of work," Palazzo said.
The fact that AI gathers them into information that can be used immediately has changed the way she runs her life.
Palazzo's story is no longer too special. More and more parents, mainly mothers, are starting to use AI to create very ordinary things: scheduling, finding schools for children, making menus, going to the market, arranging babysitters or reminding of forgettable things.
If washing machines once helped people reduce manual labor, AI is expected to do the same with another type of labor: Memory and coordination.
When the family has an additional "assistant" housewife
Elizabeth Shaffer, a mother of 3 in New York (USA), used AI to create her own website for her family. There are children's calendars, rules in the house, weaning plans for babies and important phone numbers. She also created an email scanning tool and automatically added events to the calendar.
Even what to eat during the week is simplified. Shaffer chooses dishes for each day, from which she has a list to go to the market. Then, she puts this list into ChatGPT to complete orders on a website providing food delivery services.
Others use AI in a simpler way. Laura Nolan, a researcher and medical consultant, once asked AI to research and compare options when a family needs to buy a car. Chase Hall uses AI to schedule 3 people to look after his 2-year-old son, and also calculate wages for each person. Their common point is not their passion for technology. Simply, they have too much to remember.
Today, a child can have a full schedule of classes, sports activities and school events. One working day ends does not mean the mind is rested. Behind work, there are still dozens of family matters following each other.
AI therefore does not necessarily bring an extra free hour. Sometimes, it only helps one person not have to remember a mountain of work at the same time.
That is also the reason Laura Cunningham, co-founder of AI assistant Ava, thought about developing a tool specifically for families. During the time of working at high intensity in the technology industry while taking care of her children, she once felt like she could not bear everything.
Ava can track children's schedules, automatically remind them of important things, turn voice notes into shopping and to-do lists, and update school schedules and sports schedules from photos.
With Cunningham, housework, which is usually done by women, has long been less noticed by technology. AI can begin to change that by supporting seemingly small but time-consuming tasks.
Set limits
There are also people who have used AI at a much higher level. Jesse Genet, a former CEO who is taking care of 7 children at a farm in California (USA), uses 5 AI assistants at the same time to help with housework. These tools can go to the market, prepare lessons for children and fill out forms.
Claire Vo, a technology founder, uses up to 9 AI assistants to manage life and believes that each family needs a "family assistant".
But the more tasks assigned to AI, the more important the question of limits becomes.
A family with countless private information: school schedule, address, living habits, health information of children. Shreya Gulati, a person who uses AI to find kindergartens, creates menus and reminders, believes that users must be careful with the data they share. She does not include sensitive information such as medical history or social security number in AI tools.
More importantly, decisions require human judgment. AI can find information when children are sick, but cannot replace parents to decide when to take their children to the doctor. It can suggest schools, menus or schedules, but the final choice still needs to be based on people's understanding of their own family.
Gulati believes that AI is suitable for things like research and implementation, but needs to keep boundaries with judgment, decision-making and critical thinking.
Some AI applications for housework
Not only tech-savvy people, ordinary families also have more and more choices to bring AI into housework. Some tools can support preparing menus, making shopping lists or managing smart home devices. Anthropic once published a survey showing that Claude can significantly help shorten time in some food preparation stages. Amazon also developed Alexa+ as an assistant for managing devices and housework. Some other popular AI applications supporting homework management can be mentioned such as Ollie, Cozi Max and Ava.
AI seeks to measure "invisible" housework
Housework is often difficult to measure because most are not paid: taking care of children, scheduling, cooking, shopping, remembering appointments... According to the chief economist of OpenAI, unpaid housework can be equivalent to about 15% of global GDP and is mostly done by women. AI is starting to intervene in that invisible labor itself, from scheduling to making menus, shopping.
