Hark releases an AI personal assistant with a focus on privacy

Hark, a new startup founded by serial entrepreneur Brett Adcock, has launched its AI personal assistant called Hark Pro. The company is focused on building a user interface for AI rather than creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) or curing diseases. Hark Pro is a free service with a subscription tier for heavy users, aiming to create an operating system for AI computers of the future.

Unlike other AI assistants, Hark Pro presents itself as a full-screen experience with a central chat dialog, panels displaying mini-dashboards for various interests, and a custom background image based on the user's location and time.

The assistant proactively asks users about tasks such as expenses, emails, meetings, and flight bookings. It also handles tasks independently, such as when it recently recognized that a user's colleague needed to renew their car registration and completed the process through the relevant website. A notable design choice is displaying the agent's web navigation in a small window, to build trust and demonstrate responsible behavior.

Hark Pro's primary selling point is its focus on substituting for the user's computer, rather than merely being an app. The company believes it offers a better user experience compared to competitors. However, the specific model powering Hark Pro is trained explicitly for computer use, which may limit its broader knowledge and capabilities compared to frontier large language models (LLMs).

The startup aims to release an AI-native device supporting its software by 2027. Hark's founder, Brett Adcock, acknowledges that the future of computing still feels like a terminal, emphasizing the potential for a fresh approach to AI computing.