Modern smartphones can be overwhelming, bombarding users with countless apps and endless notifications. A new application called Poppy seeks to bring order to this chaos by consolidating your calendar, email, messages, and other sources into one unified dashboard. As the company's website explains, "Poppy pays attention so you don't have to."

Users can link various services to Poppy, including their email, calendar, and at minimum, their location. The app then leverages this data alongside artificial intelligence to determine what matters most to you at any given moment, based on your current life context. On a basic level, this means you can open Poppy or glance at its widgets to see upcoming meetings or tasks. However, Poppy's standout capability lies in its proactive suggestions.

For example, if Poppy has access to your calendar and notices you have a 30-minute free window near a park, it might recommend taking a break for a walk before your next event. If you're organizing a brunch with a friend who mentioned dietary preferences in an earlier conversation, Poppy can incorporate that information when suggesting restaurants. You can also message Poppy with questions or requests, much like you would a personal assistant. It can track flights and alert you to changes, or remind you when it's time to take medication.

Poppy's creator, Sai Kambampati, says he has long been fascinated by human-computer interaction, having earned his Master's degree in Computer Science with a specialization in that field. A former software engineer at the AI hardware startup Humane, he witnessed firsthand how people are trying to rethink their relationship with technology. "That's something that I found very, very exciting. And I felt like with all the AI technology that we're seeing around us, it has never been more possible to embark on something like this," he said.

At launch, Poppy works with everyday apps such as Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Gmail, Outlook, iCloud Mail, Apple Health, Reminders, Contacts, iMessage, WhatsApp, and others. (It uses a Mac app to access iMessage, which could cause issues down the line since Apple generally doesn't allow third-party apps to access its messaging service.) It also integrates with apps like Uber and Instacart, and Kambampati plans to expand support to additional services over time. The company states that user data is encrypted when stored in its database, and it maintains a zero-retention policy when using cloud-based large language models for suggestions. However, Kambampati hopes to eventually shift to local, on-device AI models as technology advances. "My hope, my dream is - within two to three years from now, when our devices have much more powerful compute, and the models get much smaller, cheaper and more high quality - eventually we can have all of this running on our own devices, and there won't even be a need to hit the servers," he explains. Poppy's San Francisco-based team of four is backed by $1.25 million in pre-seed funding led by Kindred Ventures, with additional participation from various angels, including DeepMind's Logan Kilpatrick.