Episode summary
Seeing The Future from AI Companions to Personal Software
The a16z Show
· · Hosts: Erik Torenberg, Anish, Justine Moore · Guests: Eugenia Kuyda
Summary
Eugenia Kuyda argues that today’s AI experience is trapped in a command-line era: chatbots are useful, but they mostly expose search and writing, not the richer capabilities models can already support. Her answer is Wabi, a mobile-first platform for “personal software” where anyone can build, tweak, share, and remix tiny apps that are deeply personalized to context, memory, and taste. She compares the opportunity to the shift from TV channels to YouTube, and says software should become more like content: discoverable, social, and far more abundant than the few apps built by professional developers.
She says the biggest unlock is not text-to-app for developers, but a consumer product for nontechnical people, with guardrails and visual controls. In her view, app sharing should look more like TikTok or YouTube than file links, with prompts, mini-apps, and community feedback all living on the platform. She also describes Wabi as a layer for context that can connect across apps, unlike today’s walled gardens.
Kuyda closes by rejecting screenless, voice-only hardware as the wrong future. She believes AI should be a screen-first operating system with local models and software that can change on the fly, rather than “just an app on your phone.”
Key takeaways
- Eugenia Kuyda says chatbots are still the MS-DOS era for AI interfaces, and a more visual, interactive layer is needed to unlock broader use cases.
- She expects Wabi to make software feel like content: tiny, shareable apps that can be discovered, remixed, and commented on like posts.
- Kuyda says the biggest market is nontechnical consumers, not developers, so Wabi hides code and uses guardrails, templates, and visual controls.
- She argues the future value is in deep personalization, where apps carry context, memory, and user-specific prompts across use cases.
- Kuyda says voice-only devices miss too many real-world use cases, and the right AI hardware should be screen-first and locally intelligent.
Notable quotes
“Right now AI is just an app on your phone. Uh it should not be that way”
“we got obsessed with this metaphor that the current chat bots are really the Microsoft DOSs era for AI um interfaces”
“apps, many apps could become kind of community starters”
“I do believe a lot in the concept of an organizational layer”
How the episode opens
Right now AI is just an app on your phone. Uh it should not be that way. Sometimes you need to sort of go big or go home.
Not having the balls to do that, especially in this current environment, you can suffer the consequences. There's a huge mind trap that exists among builders in the space where they somehow think that voice is the main interface. That's because they are somehow thinking about the movie her all the time but not in the right way.
So you were a true pioneer in the space before everyone else was doing it. Um maybe just talk about your reflections of how that category has has as you helped create it and then how how it's evolved. It definitely evolved noticed.
It's pretty crazy. We had a very strong belief that it would happen but we still were so surprised when it actually happened. I guess this was just it just still felt like complete magic.
So Jenna excited to get into everything you're doing with Wabby. First, let's contextualize this a little bit. When you look back at sort of the arc of of your career, perhaps the last decade, how do you contextualize what is the through line, you know, through replica, wabi, etc.?
Oh, wow. That's a um that's a hard question, but I guess the maybe the main theme uh is we're always early. Sometimes a little bit too early, sometimes hopefully this time around, you know, uh the right the right kind of early, the right type of early, but generally, yeah, I've started uh working on AI in 2012, so over a decade ago.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- ai companions
- personal software
- ai interfaces
- mini-apps
- software as content
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Wabi
- Replika
- OpenAI
Watch the episode
Watch “Seeing The Future from AI Companions to Personal Software” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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The a16z Show, this episode and its artwork belong to Andreessen Horowitz. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
