AI in your WhatsApp: are messaging-native assistants actually useful?

A mainstream daily asks whether chat-based assistants work as advertised.

What happenedMint's Mint Lounge reports on the messaging-native assistant wave - Instinct, OpenAI's dots, Meta's Muse and local services like Faff - through early-user accounts: Instinct spotting a tax notice and closing it, Muse selling a bed on Facebook Marketplace, and a courier booking that went badly wrong.

Why it mattersThe piece weighs the delegation promise against supervision needs, credential hesitation and a recent Instinct scare - a fair, mainstream read of where trust in this category stands. Its mention of Instinct's valuation cites an older funding report; the verified current figure is the recent US$1B raise at a US$10B valuation.