Text-based AI assistants have become a fiercely competitive arena, with Instinct, Wajo, Town, Ollie, and Meta's Muse agent—which debuted just last week—all competing for users' attention and everyday tasks. Among these, San Francisco-based Instinct stands out as one of the most popular, drawing enormous investor enthusiasm at what is reportedly a $10 billion valuation. That popularity could climb even higher now that Instinct has introduced a new calling feature, enabling your agent to make phone calls and serve as a concierge. Meta's Muse, another formidable player in this race, has rolled out the same capability.

Noah Shinn, Instinct's founder, revealed on X that the startup's new calling feature—dubbed Instinct Concierge—can handle tasks such as booking restaurants that don't accept online reservations, securing a spot on your dentist's cancellation list, or resolving issues with your cable bill. The feature is being released in early access to select users, with plans to make it available to everyone eventually, he stated.

While Instinct is moving quickly, Meta's Muse AI assistant is matching pace. It too has just acquired the ability to place calls to U.S. businesses. The tech giant indicated the feature will initially roll out to users who request that Muse make a call. (This effectively functions as a feature request system, and Meta said that whenever Muse introduces new features, they'll be available first to those who ask Muse about them.)

These calling capabilities are arriving at a time when several competitors had been promoting their ability to make calls as a key advantage over Instinct. But with Instinct's Concierge feature now rolling out, they're all on equal footing in this regard.

Last week, Instinct also introduced email addresses, allowing Instinct to manage account sign-ups and administration. Additionally, the company now permits its users' assistants to reach out to other people's assistants for handling certain tasks, by adding those users to a trusted network. Both Instinct and Muse have experienced significant momentum in recent weeks. Instinct raised $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuation last month, and it is reportedly negotiating to raise $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation, with investors demonstrating strong appetite for text-based assistants capable of navigating various platforms on behalf of users. Analytics firm Sensor Tower observed that Muse surpassed the Meta AI app's launch performance in its first few days. The app accumulated over 730,000 downloads in the U.S., compared to the Meta AI app, which was downloaded 707,000 times in the first five days after launch. At one point, the app even climbed to the number 2 spot on the top charts.