[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (마리사 메이어) has entered the personal AI agent race with Dazzle, an AI assistant that reads smartphone photo albums and handles everyday chores. Attention is focused on whether it can survive against rivals such as Meta and OpenAI.

Mayer joined Google in 1999 as its 20th employee and first female engineer, leading search for 10 years. She also oversaw development of Maps, News and Gmail. She became Yahoo CEO in 2012 with the goal of rebuilding the company’s reputation, but stepped down in 2017 without making a major impact and founded an AI startup incubator the following year.

According to Mayer, Dazzle is a personal AI agent that uses photos as its starting point.

It analyzes images in a user’s camera roll to answer questions, get things done and make suggestions. For example, it can buy pants the user photographed or help pick a difficult birthday present for a spouse. It also automatically creates a to-do list called Get it Done and an Ideas list of activities to try.

She previously released the contact management app Sunshine Contacts and the photo-sharing app Shine, but shut them down after failing to draw much response. During that process, she realized images also contain a lot of information, which led to Dazzle’s development. She explained that because photos show what users find pretty, AI can figure out their personality and what they like and dislike.

Mayer also uses Dazzle herself. When her 10-year-old daughter’s homeroom teacher asked for three strengths, she asked Dazzle and it immediately replied: "empathetic, creative and likes animals." On a family trip to Venice, it recommended a mask-making experience, and for her son’s 14th birthday it suggested a glow-in-the-dark pool party. For a Halloween costume, she said it proposed a cake-shaped dress inspired by painter Wayne Thiebaud’s cake paintings, reflecting her preference for baking and art.

The users Mayer is targeting with Dazzle are ordinary people who are not good with technology, especially busy women. She said, "It may be a bias, but women take more photos and are more visual," adding, "Using AI in a visual way is more fun."

She also pointed out that existing AI assistants are overly technical and full of jargon. She believes some people are too busy to learn that, and there will be more women than men among them. She stressed that Dazzle is also a good service for men.

According to her, choosing a birthday party theme or picking a Halloween costume should be enjoyable, but in many cases it is a time-consuming chore. For that reason, it may be better to leave such tasks to AI.

She also presented a concept in which efficiency would rise sharply if her AI assistant could talk directly with her husband’s AI assistant. Asked whether a smooth future in which AI plans birthdays, vacations and gifts is not depressing, she replied, "I haven’t thought deeply about it."

The competitive environment is also tough. Dazzle must compete with giants such as Meta and OpenAI, and many people are reluctant to hand their entire photo albums over to AI, the New York Times reported. Still, Mayer said, "I have greater expectations than fear that AI will help humanity rather than harm it."