On Thursday, the AI startup Sesame—co-founded by former Oculus team members and others from the VR company that was acquired by Meta—released a public preview of the conversational AI agents it has spent over a year developing. Through its new iOS app, Sesame is reimagining the conventional AI chatbot experience popularized by apps like ChatGPT, crafting one where dialogue flows smoothly, even when the AI requires a moment to think. As the company explains in its launch announcement, “There’s an inherent tension between replying quickly and taking the time to compose thoughtful responses. A slower response is usually more correct, but it can also feel unnatural if it takes too long.”

To tackle this challenge, Sesame says it has built fast search and retrieval systems that keep the AI equipped with current information, along with technology that enables it to run multiple parallel searches while speaking, weaving those results into its responses as it talks. This means the AI will converse more like a human, even pivoting mid-sentence if necessary, as it taps into newer information—much like a person might when recalling another key fact or point they wish to add. The app features four distinct AI agents named Maya, Miles, Simone, and Charlie, each with their own unique voice, personality, perspective, and memory. Maya and Miles were previously available in Sesame’s Research Preview of its technology, where they were accessed by over a million people within the first few weeks, according to Sesame investor Sequoia at the time. (The company had just raised its $250 million Series B from Sequoia and others, and was launching a beta.)

During the beta, Sesame incorporated user feedback and rolled out features such as search cards with image results for visualizing concepts, notes for capturing key takeaways, a texting mode for situations where speaking aloud isn’t feasible, and support for deep dives that allow more in-depth results. There’s also a new incognito mode for private conversations, which gives agents access to prior context but saves nothing to memory. The app, however, is just the first step toward Sesame’s broader ambitions for AI involving intelligent eyewear, which the team expects to launch in 2027. Before that, the agents will also learn to do more than just think alongside you, Sesame hints, suggesting they’ll later be able to take action on your behalf—hence why they’re called “agents” rather than just chatbots.

That prospect is potentially even more intriguing, as working with agentic tools or apps today typically requires being able to prompt for what you need and having a clear idea of what you want to happen, and sometimes, even how it should happen. A conversational agent you could talk to naturally could help you take the next steps, without needing to perfect the command you give it. The iOS app is available today in 39 countries, and the full experience is free for now. However, there may still be a short waitlist upon sign-up. An Android preview is coming in the future, the company says.