Big Tech’s Personal AI Agents Are Coming for the to-Do List

Google and Meta are building personal artificial intelligence agents, moving at the same time toward the same idea of an assistant that operates in the background, handles tasks without being asked twice, and gets sharper at anticipating needs the longer it runs.

Google’s version is codenamed Remy, Business Insider reported Tuesday (May 5). It runs inside the Gemini app and connects Google’s broader suite of services, including search, email and calendar. It is described internally as a round-the-clock assistant for work, school and everyday life.

To make room for it, Google shut down its previous AI agent experiment, called Mariner, Monday (May 4), folding that team’s work into the new effort, The Decoder reported Wednesday (May 6). Google declined to comment to the publication.

Meta’s version is called Hatch, The Information reported Tuesday. The company has built practice environments where the assistant learns to navigate real consumer apps, including DoorDash, Etsy, Reddit and others before deployment. Hatch is scheduled for internal testing by the end of June. Meta is also building a shopping tool for Instagram that lets a user tap on a product in a video and complete a purchase without leaving the app, aimed squarely at TikTok Shop.

What They’re Responding To

Both companies are reacting to the same event. In January, an Austrian developer named Peter Steinberger released a free tool called OpenClaw that let people send a message on WhatsApp or Telegram and have software handle the rest, such as booking a meeting, drafting an email or running an errand online while they slept. It became one of the fastest-growing pieces of software in internet history, reaching 3.2 million users in weeks, The Next Web reported Sunday (May 3).

It also had a ceiling. OpenClaw required users to install and run software on their own computer, following instructions that tripped up anyone without a technical background. One of the project’s own team members warned that it was too dangerous for people who couldn’t navigate a command line.

Then in April, Anthropic, whose AI model powered much of OpenClaw, cut off flat-rate access and required users to pay separately for every interaction, Axios repoted April 6. The tool that had seemed like a breakthrough for everyday consumers stayed, in practice, a product for enthusiasts.

Mark Zuckerberg said on Meta’s most recent earnings call that he sees an opportunity to build a version of the OpenClaw experience that is more polished and easier to use, PYMNTS reported Tuesday. Remy and Hatch are that version.

The Advantage Neither OpenClaw nor Its Users Had

The core difference is where these products live. OpenClaw required installation on a personal computer. Remy lives inside an app Android users already have. Hatch will run inside Instagram, where more than 2 billion people spend time every day. There’s no setup. The assistant arrives inside something people already open.

That positioning matches where consumer behavior is heading. More than 60% of consumers in the United States used a dedicated AI platform in the past year, according to PYMNTS Intelligence.

Neither Google nor Meta faces the cost problem that ended OpenClaw’s cheap access. Both own the computing infrastructure that their assistants run on. When Anthropic raised the price of running OpenClaw, millions of users were left without an affordable option. Google and Meta are building for exactly that audience into the places those users already are.

Google’s annual developer conference, where the company is expected to say more about its agent plans, is scheduled for later this month.

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