Every major AI lab now has a personal assistant app. Anthropic opened early acce
By John Aspinall ✱ · October 22, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Every major AI lab now has a personal assistant app.
Anthropic opened early access to Claude Duet.
Here's what it does:
→ Flags things that need your attention
→ Does tasks you ask for
→ Keeps working while you're away
→ Checks with you before acting on your behalf
That makes four:
1. Grok Bot (xAI)
2. ChatGPT Dots (OpenAI)
3. Muse (Meta)
4. Claude Duet (Anthropic)
The model race was about who answers best.
The assistant race is about who gets access to your inbox, calendar, files and accounts.
That's a trust decision, not a features decision.
The questions that matter when you pick one:
→ What can it see? Email only, or files, calendar and connected apps too?
→ What can it do without asking? Read, draft, send, buy?
→ Can you turn approval on for every action, and does it stay on?
→ Where does your data go, and is it used for training?
→ Can you see a log of everything it did?
For an ecommerce operator, the first useful jobs are boring, and that's the point:
→ Flag the supplier email that needs an answer today
→ Chase the wholesale invoice that's 10 days late
→ Pull last week's ACOS and TACOS before the Monday call
→ Spot the out-of-stock risk in the inventory report
→ Draft replies to the five customer emails that all ask the same thing
None of these need a genius.
They need something that pays attention every day without getting bored.
Where I'd hold back for now:
Anything that spends money, changes prices, or talks to customers without you seeing it first.
Do this: pick one of the four, give it one low-risk job for two weeks, and keep the approval step on the whole time.
Expand its access only after it earns it.