After teasing its development last year, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley has now launched BeeBot: an AI-powered social app for iPhones that talks to you about what’s happening nearby. In his blog announcement, Crowley says BeeBot behaves like a “personalized radio DJ” that provides location-based audio updates through your headphones, telling you about what friends are up to, local news, and events occurring in the neighborhood as you walk around.
“Audio updates are meant to be short and sweet (a few sentences here and there), tailored to your interests and your social graph, and designed to both inspire and inform you,” Crowley says in the announcement. “The vibe we’re going for is more ‘Waze meets Gossip Girl,’ and less ‘Wikipedia in your ears.’”
While the app is called “BeeBot for AirPods,” Crowley says it supports any wired or wireless headphones or Bluetooth-based audio devices, including speakers, car stereos, and wearables like Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. It’s always on, activates automatically when you put your headphones in, and turns off when you take them out. BeeBot will lower the volume and speak over any music you’re listening to and automatically pause and unpause podcasts when it wants to speak, but it won’t interrupt you during phone calls or video chats.
This won’t be a frequent occurrence, however. Crowley says users may get updates from BeeBot a few times each day, “but not 10x/day” to prevent it from being too disruptive. Updates are pulled from various sources, including live locations and status updates from other BeeBot users, and uses “keywords” you give it about your interests to suggest local places and events for you to check out.
The app is “still very much in beta,” according to Crowley, and the news it provides is intended to be “more gossip’y than news’y.” In its current state, BeeBot provides the best experience in walkable US cities, as opposed to when users are driving, cycling, or using the subway. It’s only available for iOS users in the US for now, and Crowley says that a CarPlay version is in development.