MeetKai – The World’s First AI Concierge

If someone were to tell you that they were going to take on Google or Apple, you’d probably think they were unrealistic, to put it diplomatically. Well, that’s what James Kaplan, founder and CEO of MeetKai, is doing. 

“In 2018, it was like, this is crazy. How is everyone satisfied with this trajectory? 

“If you have these pieces of tech where they’re not innovating and they’re stagnating, there’s no reason to believe that all of a sudden we’re going to start innovating.”

Kaplan, formerly of the finance world, noticed in ten years of existence that Siri had not changed a bit. She’s still the same awkward, mediocre chatbot we were only mildly impressed with ten years ago. 

“I look at that as a good opportunity.”

Taking Siri and Alexa On

In 2018, Kaplan and Weili Dai founded MeetKai, the world’s first AI concierge. Imagine Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant weren’t just fancy chatbots. Instead, they were fully interactive AIs capable of guiding you where you wanted to go. Whether that’s to a new restaurant or learning a simple fact. 

Except, they totally aren’t. 

“What makes a voice system good is that they use that they allow people to talk in a conversational way. When we use search engines these days, like Google, we have sort of been trained to use text and really to think in terms of keywords.

“You can’t just say, you know, ‘what are good Tom Cruise movies that have action, but no romance.’ You have to say ‘Tom Cruise, Action movie.’ And our brains have almost been trained to think like that when we’re using search engines — that we have to think in terms of a way a computer can better understand.

“For voice assistant like you don’t have that anymore. What I always hated was seeing people use like Siri … giving it commands as if they’re barking at it — saying call mom ‘on way’ or text mom ‘on way’.

Kai, that adorable little bird, is joining the club with Siri, Alexa, and whatever Google Assistant is named. Only Kai has newer ideas and a fresh perspective. 

How Does MeetKai Work? 

Kai works like Siri. You open MeetKai up and speak to Kai. Just ask, “Hey Kai, can you find me a good recipe for ‘beef rendang?’” in moments you will be delivered a mouth-watering recipe for the world’s most delicious beef stew. 

Just like Siri, Kai searches for the solutions to your query. Unlike Siri, however, you cannot ask Kai to call anyone or save dates on your calendar. 

“We actually don’t do a lot of the things that Siri does because we’re not built into the phone.

“So, what we’re trying to do is push people towards that idea of like at our core, we’re kind of a concierge that makes recommendations.”

Kai is the most adorable hotel concierge you’ll encounter. One that will eventually come to learn and adapt to your own unique personality. 

“One of the things that we want to do was to have Kai have a universal personality that would slowly move towards you. 

“I think that would be the idea is that the personality of the app would change as you use it over time into a way that’s sort of like your own ‘mini-me’ is what my co-founder likes to call it.”

The idea of MeetKai is to give users a personable AI that they can turn to for recommendations for streaming, recipes, restaurants, news, games, weather, etc. But with a personality far more colorful than Siri’s stale, monotone voice. 

What’s Next For MeetKai?

Kaplan has lofty goals for MeetKai’s success. Besides taking on giants like Google and Apple, Kaplan wants MeetKai to be the resource users turn to – just like they turn to Google now. 

“If you think about how often a person uses Google, it’s like three to four times a day. But if you can think of their queries over the course of a month, what percent of them actually end up with web pages versus what they really want? [They want] a piece of content. 

“This is like Google’s real mission, right? Google’s mission is to give you the results before you click off the search page. They don’t want to send traffic [away].

“That’s sort of our goal as well.”

“We want to try to be able to do certain things like Google does, but better. 

“Such that, when users want to find a restaurant, they don’t open up Yelp or Google Maps or anything that they just use us to find it.

“That’s sort of one pathway – it’s ambitious. But it’s something that we think is possible.” 

Big Tech Is Missing The Boat

Giant companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook (ahem, excuse me, Meta) are too caught up in their success to continue innovating. Need proof? Has Apple’s autocorrect gotten better, or worse? Has Siri changed at all? Or is she exactly the same, only less amusing? 

MeetKai is the first company in about ten years to start pushing the limits of technology in an innovative direction. A direction that people are actually interested in. 

Who asked for the metaverse, Mark? 

MeetKai is still new and the AI is still learning. In a tech world where the giants seem to dominate, it’s refreshing to have an adorable little bird guide you to where you want to go.