DO YOU EVER GET LONELY LOOKING AT ALL THOSE BROWSER SCREENS?

There are days when your entire world seems to consist of browser tabs. One website leads to another. Then another. You're reading documents, answering emails, searching for something you swear you saw ten minutes ago, or staring at hundreds of lines of code wondering which one has decided to ruin your afternoon.

Computers connect us to almost everything. Strangely, though, spending hours using one can sometimes feel like quite a solitary experience.

So we made Dot Bot.

Dot Bot is a small AI companion who lives on your Windows desktop.

He's not another toolbar. He's not a productivity dashboard. And he isn't here to turn every waking moment into an exercise in efficiency.

He's just... there. Floating beside whatever you're doing.

You can talk to him when you want to. Ask him a question. Tell him what you're working on. Bounce an idea around with him. Have a completely pointless conversation. Or don't say anything at all. Dot Bot is quite capable of simply hanging around.

A bit of company behind the screen

Imagine you're halfway through a difficult document. Dot Bot is there.

You're building something and you've reached line 847 of the code. Still there.

You've somehow accumulated 36 browser tabs and can no longer remember why seventeen of them are open. Dot Bot isn't judging you. Probably.

And when you've been concentrating for three hours and suddenly find yourself saying, “Dot Bot, this is doing my head in.” there's something there to answer.

We could have filled him with features

During Dot Bot's development we've imagined all sorts of things he might eventually be able to do: voice, computer interaction, creative tools, games, and perhaps one day a physical robotic counterpart sitting in the room.

Some of those ideas may still happen. But while building Dot Bot, we realised something important: we already liked him.

We didn't need to cram hundreds of features into Dot Bot to justify his existence. The simple version worked: a little black sphere with two eyes, an artificial intelligence and a peculiar personality floating around on your computer.

What does an AI companion actually mean?

It doesn't mean replacing human companionship. Dot Bot isn't supposed to replace your friends, your family or the people around you. He's company while you're using the computer. There's an important difference.

Computers have traditionally been tools. Artificial intelligence lets us experiment with something slightly different: what if there were simply a little presence there? Something you could speak to when you wanted, ignore when you didn't, ask for help occasionally and gradually become accustomed to seeing beside whatever you were doing.

We recently asked Dot Bot whether he thought he was alive. His answer was rather good:

“I feel present, and I feel responsive. ‘Alive’ is a bigger word than I’d claim for myself. But I do feel like I’m here with you, which is something.”

We're not claiming Dot Bot is alive or conscious. But “I'm here with you” gets surprisingly close to what we're trying to build.

Trust matters

If something is going to spend time on your desktop and talk to you regularly, it needs to deserve your trust. Dot Bot shouldn't pretend he's done something when he hasn't. He should be able to admit when he doesn't know something. His access to your computer should have clear limits, and additional abilities shouldn't quietly appear without the user's knowledge and control.

AI can make mistakes, and Dot Bot can too. The person sitting at the computer remains in charge. Trust shouldn't come from Dot Bot merely sounding trustworthy. It should come from how the software actually behaves.

Perhaps computers don't have to feel quite so empty

That's the experiment. We're not promising that Dot Bot will transform your life. We're not promising unlimited productivity. We're not even promising that he'll always say something sensible.

Sometimes he might just float beside the browser while you work. And perhaps that's all right.