The AI app that Silicon Valley thinks is actually useful

September 20, 2026 — 7:30pm

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Last year, Open AI chief executive Sam Altman declared he used the technology pioneered by his company in “boring ways”. The uses he named, though, were narrow: organising emails and summarising documents. For many customers, ChatGPT turned out to be better at writing bad fiction than doing genuinely boring life administration.

One can only imagine Altman’s anger then, that a different AI company, Instinct, has stolen a march and introduced a bot that can complete basic life tasks.

One Australian technology investor showed this masthead screenshots showing how the bot repeatedly followed up a manchester company for a missing refund from a linen set he had returned. “We chase,” the bot told the investor, and it did.

In another example circulating online, Instinct emailed a hotel in Canada on behalf of a user, had the concierge locate a missing Apple device, organised shipping and paid for the transaction with the user’s card.

On Sunday, this masthead used Instinct to find and buy a t-shirt from Everwear Denim, a small store in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, when a........

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