An AI personal assistant for busy parents

The app syncs family calendars and sends reminders about a range of tasks and appointments

Spotted: Part of closing the global gender gap involves reducing the amount of housework and household management that still disproportionately falls to women. But as modern life gets increasingly busy, it gets more difficult for all parents to manage household and childcare duties and split that work. How could AI lend a hand?

An AI life assistant named Ario has been developed by a California-based duo determined to build something useful for busy families in a way that also keeps personal data safe. Co-founders Sumit Agarwal and Mengmeng Chen built Ario to reduce the amount of time busy families spend on syncing calendars, booking appointments, and reminding each other of the various tasks they need to complete each day, week, month, and year.

Ario is currently publicly available in beta form and works by understanding the tasks and routines of each user. Users connect their Google calendars, Amazon and DoorDash accounts, and other apps they use regularly and can forward emails to the AI with queries regarding actions needed.

The AI tracks all connected calendars and sends reminders about various tasks and indicates potential scheduling conflicts. Users upload photos of a calendar, such as a school year, and the AI adds all relevant dates to the necessary calendars. Regular Amazon users receive reminders when return dates are approaching, and account holders can access their data from other apps such as social accounts within minutes, without having to go through the usual request permission processes.

Ario’s dedication to data security includes ensuring that full ownership of all information remains with the user – not the app – and the more accounts that an individual or family connects, the more useful Ario becomes. For instance, the AI recommends restaurants based on past DoorDash orders and can suggest holiday itineraries based on the varying needs of the family, including children’s nap schedules and dietary restrictions.

Ario is already available for iOS and will shortly be available for Android. The company recently raised $16 million in seed funding to expand, deepen, and improve its technology.

Written By: Keely Khoury