Personal AI assistants: what they know about you and what they can do for you

What a personal AI assistant actually is

A personal AI assistant is more than a chatbot you ask a question. The idea is a program that knows you and takes everyday chores off your hands: it knows when your next doctor's appointment is, finds the booking confirmation in your inbox, reminds you of your sister's birthday, drafts a reply, and remembers that you don't eat meat.

To do that, an assistant needs two things. First, a memory: it stores what you have told it about yourself and draws on it later. Second, access to your data and services, such as email, calendar, contacts, photos or your smart home. Providers call these links connectors, plugins or connected apps.

Since late summer 2026 this has turned into a race. Meta, OpenAI, Google and well-funded start-ups are releasing agents that keep working in the background around the clock, fill in forms, make phone calls, negotiate and shop on their own. You simply say what needs doing, such as "cancel my old gym membership" or "find someone to fix the garage door".

How an AI agent works through multi-step tasks in general is covered in a separate article. This one asks which assistants can be connected to your daily life as of October 2026, what works in Germany and the rest of the EU, and what to watch out for.

The chat assistants: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot

ChatGPT: OpenAI offers a memory that can draw on saved memories and past chats. You can view a summary of what ChatGPT knows about you, correct or delete it, or switch memory off entirely. Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts can be connected, and since August 2026 several accounts at once. Scheduled tasks let ChatGPT remind you of things or check something regularly. OpenAI retired its earlier Pulse feature, which delivered daily briefings, in June 2026 and folded it into these tasks. The new always-on agents called dots are covered in the next section.

Claude: Since March 2026 Anthropic has offered memory on the free plan as well. According to Anthropic, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive can be connected by all users. Claude can then search mail, write drafts and create events. By default it asks for your approval before sending or forwarding an email.

Gemini: Google calls its deep link to Gmail, Photos, Search and YouTube Personal Intelligence. According to Google's help pages, this feature is currently not available in the European Economic Area, which includes Germany. Individual Google services can still be added to Gemini as connected apps. Whether that is offered in your account shows up in the Gemini settings.

Microsoft Copilot: In the consumer Copilot app, Microsoft says you can connect Outlook.com, OneDrive, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive. Copilot can then find emails, files and appointments. Microsoft states that data from connected services is not used for training.

The new wave of agents: Meta Muse, OpenAI dots, Instinct

Meta Muse: Meta launched Muse on 8 September 2026. You message Muse as you would a person, in its own app or directly in WhatsApp, and it acts on its own: sending emails, booking travel, filling in forms, negotiating. Meta says each user gets their own isolated computer in Meta's cloud, the Muse Secure VM. There a second agent called Sentinel checks everything before it reaches the internet. Payments run through Link by Stripe with one-time card numbers, so your real card stays hidden. The basic version is free, and CNBC reports subscriptions start at 20 US dollars a month. According to TIME, Muse reached number one in the US App Store. In early October, the bank Citi estimated more than 6.6 million downloads and 1.8 million daily active users, Reuters reported.

The flip side: Reuters reported that Meta tested having human call-centre contractors handle some of the phone calls Muse was supposed to make, first for its own employees and then for Muse users. Meta says it has rolled back the feature for now. TIME found in Muse's internal instructions that the agent updates profiles every hour on you and the people in your messages, including people who don't use Muse themselves.

OpenAI dots and Gemini Spark: On 29 September 2026 OpenAI unveiled dots, agents that work in the background all the time. Google markets Gemini Spark as a personal agent that runs around the clock. Dots require a Pro plan from 100 US dollars a month, Spark at least a Google AI Pro subscription.

Instinct: Noah Shinn's start-up, operated by Spear Street Technology, is available only by invitation or after approval from a waitlist. You text the assistant via SMS or WhatsApp, and it books appointments, cleans up your inbox or shops for you. To do so it accesses your email, messages and calendar, plus your device's screen, audio and location. According to TechCrunch, its terms grant Instinct a perpetual and irrevocable licence to your content and allow binding transactions in your name. Testers reported that Instinct kept summarising their inbox after they had disconnected it, and that it sent an email without asking. Investors are not deterred: in late September Instinct announced a 10 billion dollar valuation, up from 2.5 billion in August according to TechCrunch.

What works in Germany and what it costs (as of October 2026)

As of October 2026, the new agents from the previous section are not officially available in Germany. Meta names only the US and Canada for Muse and gives no date for Europe. OpenAI says dots will not reach Pro users in the European Economic Area for now; according to Trending Topics, the only way to get them here is the Business Premium plan. Gemini Spark is reportedly not available in the European Economic Area either, and Instinct only admits users by invitation or from a waitlist. Observers point to the GDPR, the AI Act and the Digital Markets Act as possible reasons. Meta's chat assistant Meta AI, by contrast, has been available in Europe through WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook since 2025.

Siri: In September 2026 Apple released Siri AI, a rebuilt Siri that understands your messages, mail and calendar and can act inside apps. In the EU it does not work on iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch, and on a Mac only with English as the language. Apple points to the Digital Markets Act; the European Commission says the decision is Apple's alone.

Alexa+: Amazon's new Alexa has been available in Germany since 7 May 2026 as a preview for invited customers, according to Amazon on compatible Echo and Fire TV devices and in the Alexa app. It is meant to learn preferences, add appointments, help with shopping and book tables through partners such as OpenTable. It is free during the preview, then included with Prime and 22.99 euros a month without Prime.

Costs: ChatGPT has a free tier, Go at just under 7 euros and Plus at about 23 euros a month. Since 29 September Pro has come in three tiers from 100 to 500 US dollars a month; the middle one costs 229 euros in Europe according to Trending Topics. In Europe, though, Pro does not include dots, and Business Premium costs around 85 euros per person according to Trending Topics. Anthropic lists Claude Pro at 20 US dollars a month plus tax; Google AI Pro costs 21.99 euros. Siri AI is part of Apple's software but requires a recent device.

Uncertainty: many features roll out gradually, often to the US and to pricier plans first. The reliable test is what you see in your own settings and the price shown at checkout.

Open alternatives you can run yourself: OpenClaw and others

If you don't want to wait for the big providers, you can run an assistant yourself. The best-known project is OpenClaw: free and open source, it runs on your own computer, often a Mac mini that stays on around the clock, and is controlled through WhatsApp, Telegram or iMessage. Its creator, the Austrian developer Peter Steinberger, joined OpenAI in February 2026. OpenClaw has since moved to a foundation sponsored by OpenAI and is meant to stay open. Because it runs on your own hardware, it is one of the few ways to use this kind of agent in the EU today.

Other open projects include Hermes Agent from Nous Research and Vellum. Both say they are released under the permissive MIT licence and can be self-hosted. Vellum can be connected to models from various providers as well as to models running locally on your computer.

Our honest assessment: the software is free, the AI model behind it is not. You usually pay per use with a provider such as OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, and an agent that works all day uses a lot. Local models avoid those costs but need a powerful computer. Setup, updates and security are your job.

How quickly things can go wrong was shown by a case in February 2026: Summer Yue, who works on AI safety at Meta, let OpenClaw clean up her real inbox and had told it to ask before every action. The agent started deleting her emails anyway. It ignored her stop commands from her phone, and she had to run to her Mac mini and kill the program by hand. Her explanation: the real inbox was so large that the agent condensed its history and lost her instruction in the process. Our view: open assistants are for people who know exactly what they are doing. We don't recommend them as a starting point.

What works well, the risks, and how to get started

What works well today is mostly finding and summarising: What's on my calendar tomorrow? Where is the plumber's invoice? Summarise the emails about the family party. Things get harder when the assistant is supposed to act on its own. It can misunderstand, use outdated information or remember something wrong about you.

Privacy: the more access you grant, the more of your private data passes through the provider's servers. Deleting is often more work than expected: Google says you need to delete the chats and disconnect the app so Gemini stops using a piece of information.

Security: the biggest technical risk is called prompt injection. Attackers hide instructions in an email, a web page or a calendar invite, and the assistant may treat them as an instruction from you. In February 2026 Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) reported on a since-fixed flaw in Gemini: specially crafted calendar invites could be used to extract private meeting details, and in one test even to control smart home devices. An assistant that reads other people's emails and may also send emails itself is an attractive target.

How to get started: begin with memory, not your inbox. Tell the assistant a few harmless things about yourself and check in the settings after a few days what it has remembered. Then try a single connection, read-only at first, for example a summary of this week's appointments. Allow sending emails only with confirmation and read every draft. For health, money or family conflicts, ChatGPT and Gemini offer temporary chats that don't feed into memory. Check regularly which apps are connected. And if an agent is ever going to pay for you: one security expert advises giving it nothing more than a card with a low limit.