Snap is launching a new Specs AI tool, and it's coming to iOS and Mac

Primary Journalistic Dispatch & Direct Reporting

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In-Depth Developments & Factual Context

Snap's 'Specs Intelligence' is an 'anticipatory AI service' available for iOS in preview on Wednesday.

Snap's 'Specs Intelligence' is an 'anticipatory AI service' available for iOS in preview on Wednesday.

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Industry Impact & Strategic Analysis

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Snap is introducing "Specs Intelligence," a new AI assistant that can connect other digital accounts to help you with things like work tasks and keeping track of travel information. It seems similar to AI assistants like Meta's Muse and Gemini's Spark, though Snap is pitching Specs Intelligence as an "anticipatory AI service" that "helps you manage what needs attention today, so you can make progress toward your longer-term goals." Like with other AI assistants, you can also chat with it.

Specs Intelligence is being launched alongside Specs, Snap's first consumer pair of augmented reality glasses. But it's also available on iOS today in preview, and you can get on a waitlist for the "full early-access experience" that's coming to Mac. Snap wouldn't say on the record how the preview differs from the full experience.

Forward Outlook & Market Perspective

Here's how Specs Intelligence works, according to Snap :

SPECS Intelligence builds an understanding of your goals, priorities, relationships, and routines from the apps and tools you choose to connect. The service is designed to carry that personal context across devices and deepens its understanding over time, helping you move between work, personal responsibilities, and the things you care about.

SPECS Intelligence is designed to anticipate when help would be useful and surface relevant information and actions without waiting for a prompt. Before a meeting, it could highlight decisions to make, questions to ask, and things to remember. For an upcoming trip, it could bring together flight, hotel, and dinner plans while flagging a work deadline that falls during the visit.

If you're using Specs Intelligence on the Specs AR glasses, Specs can pull personal content and place it "directly into view" when relevant, like when you ask for a daily briefing before work. According to a video, Specs Intelligence can connect to apps like Gmail and Slack.

Specs Intelligence uses "a proprietary combination of open-source models hosted in the US alongside local LLMs," according to spokesperson Cassie Bumgarner, who adds that "We regularly update the mixture of models as we continue iterating towards the best version of SPECS Intelligence." But the company faces real challenges in that it needs users to trust it with their information and with data from connected services. Snap is trying to get ahead of those concerns by saying that it can't view or access personal content you use with Specs Intelligence and that "Personal content from connected accounts will not be used to train or fine-tune Snap's AI models, or to serve personalized ads." But it's still a tall order, especially given how we've found other AI assistants with broad access to data to be pretty unnerving .

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