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Now that AI can control your web browser, the next frontier might be to take over your entire computer. At least that’s what Seattle-based startup Vercept is trying to do with Vy, a currently free Windows and Mac app that can manipulate your mouse and keyboard to automate tedious or repetitive tasks. You just tell it what you’re trying to do, and then it takes control. Vy first launched as a beta for Macs in May, but has now been rebuilt and is available for Windows as well. My experiments with Vy have yielded mixed results. If you’ve ever yelled at ChatGPT for failing to follow instructions, that frustration becomes magnified when AI is piloting your entire computer — tasks you might want to automate might just be done faster manually. Still, I can see some areas where an AI computer agent could be useful, which is why other companies (including Microsoft) are pursuing the same goal. I spent a lot of time waiting Kiana Ehsani, Vercept’s CEO and co-founder, says Vy is more human-like than the agent features in AI web browsers such as Perplexity Comet and ChatGPT Atlas. While those browsers reportedly work by inspecting the underlying structure of web pages, Vy takes frequent screenshots to analyze what’s happening on your screen. It then executes mouse or keyboard commands to mimic the way you’d control the computer yourself. Ehsani says people are using it to automate Excel work, extract data from the web for sharing into apps like Slack, or figure out how to use new software. “We want to have a model that understands your screen and takes action very similarly to how you do it,” Ehsani says. This ends up taking a while, though, as each individual action requires Vy to take a screenshot and upload it to its servers for analysis. Everything from opening an app to clicking a menu button requires another screenshot and more time waiting for a response — so a routine that takes 10 seconds for a human might take Vy five minutes. Vy has a couple ways to mitigate this. One option is to run tasks in “Background” mode, which lets you keep using your computer while Vy does its work in an invisible browser window. Vy’s capabilities are limited in this mode, though, as it can interact with files and web pages but can’t control other apps. (I had some impish fun getting Vy to fulfill various Microsoft Rewards tasks on my behalfperforming daily Bing searches, filling out various quizzesbut felt guilty about how much compute power must’ve been burned along the way.) The other option is to schedule tasks for when you’re not around. For instance, I set up a daily routine for 7 a.m. that minimizes any open windows on my desktop, opens Obsidian, moves it to the center of the screen, and loads my to-do list. Watching Vy do this in real-time is excruciating, but scheduling it to run before I sit down at my computerthereby forcing me to confront my to-do listis pretty helpful. Ehsani hopes that on-device AI will speed things up in the future. Instead of having to constantly upload screenshots and download instructions, the goal is for Vy to process everything directly on the computer, though it’s unclear when that might happen or how powerful a PC you’d need. It needs a lot of hand-holding Getting Vy to perform tasks on your computer can be a bit like bossing a child around, in that it’s liable to ignore or misinterpret your instructions. A quirk of Obsidian, for instance, is that if you load the app while it’s already running, it will load an entirely new instance of Obsidian with a menu for choosing which notebook vault to open. To keep this from happening in my to-do list scenario, I asked Vy to only click the Obsidian icon on the Windows taskbar, which would load any existing instance of Obsidian instead of launching a new one. But every time I tested the routine, Vy kept ignoring my instructions and would try to click the Obsidian icon on the desktop, thereby opening a new window. I would interrupt the assistant and tell it to focus on clicking the taskbar icon, but it had trouble finding it and kept trying to open the app in other ways. At one point it even clicked the Windows Start menu to launch Obsidian from there. Ultimately I had to edit my workflow with clear instructions to never click the desktop icon, never open the Windows Start menu, and avoid using other methods to open Obsidian outside of the taskbar. I also had to lay out explicit guidance to look for a purple crystal icon that appears next to other icons in the taskbar. All told, I spent about 20 minutes troubleshooting this tiny routine that mostly involved minimizing some windows and clicking a button. Vy does have an alternative “Watch and repeat” tool for creating workflows, in which it records your screen while you perform the desired steps. But this was even less reliable in my experience. When I tried setting up my Obsidian automation this way, Vy didn’t minimize any of my open windows and instead just moved its own app to the middle of the screen. It raises some privacy and security concerns Watching Vy take persistent screenshots of my desktop was also a reminder of how much personal info could wind up on Vercept’s servers. Every time Vy takes a screenshot, it captures everything on your screen, even if it’s unrelated to the task. Until I started asking Vercept about its data retention policies, the company did not publish them on its website. Vercept now says it keeps screenshots for six months unless you delete the underlying chat manually. Either way, it keeps data for up to 30 days for safety purposes. Ehsani says it doesn’t capture screenshots when Vy isn’t actively working on a task, and doesn’t perform any post-processing on screenshot contents. Still, a few people at Vercept have full access to users’ data, including their screenshots. “There is a trade-off here,” Ehsani acknowledges. As with any agentic AI system, Vy risks making users vulnerable to prompt injection attacks, in which an attacker hides malicious instructions in web pages, emails, or calendar invites. Vercept says it has some ways to mitigate thisfor instance, by instructing Vy to watch for signs of malicious behaviorbut no AI system has a foolproof answer to this problem yet. It seems inevitable anyway Despite the potential problems and limitations, AI agents that control your devices are coming. Microsoft already has a mode for its Copilot Windows assistant that can scan what’s on your screen and provide guidance, and it’s testing a “Copilot Actions” feature that can perform tasks on your behalf. Other developers are also pursuing this idea. Github is full of experimental AI control projects, and commercial alternatives include NeuralAgent and Screenpipe. Vercept is notable among tese efforts for having raised a $16 million seed round in January, with backers including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean. Ehsani says the goal is to expand beyond just a single computer. An Android app is also in the works, and she hopes that you’ll eventually be able to give Vy instructions on your phone and have it carry the actions out on your computer, or vice versa. “One of our main visions is getting rid of mouse, keyboard, and touchscreens altogether,” Ehsani says. For now, at least, the natural speed at which humans can click around a desktop gives them the edge.
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E-Commerce
“Parasocial” is the Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year. That feeling that you and Harry Styles would instantly become friends if you ever bumped into each other? Yes, thats parasocial. The term dates back to 1956, coined by sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl to describe how TV watchers formed para-social relationships with those on their screen. The word has taken on even greater meaning in the age of social media, where we have unparalleled access to the lives of influencers, online personalities, and celebrities via phones. Take Taylor Swift and Travis Kelces engagement. The news triggered mass hysteria online, with many displaying genuine raw emotion for a couple theyve never even met. Or British singer Lily Allen, whose latest album West End Girl details a breakup and sparked a parasocial interest in her love life, according to the Cambridge Dictionary. Its not just celebrities. This year, the dictionary noted a surge in those looking up the word after the Youtube star IShowSpeed blocked an obsessive fan, identified as his “number 1 parasocial. A number of popular female streamers have spoken publicly about dealing with stalking, some resorting to hiring security while navigating online fame. Oftentimes these parasocial relationships are built unintentionally. After spending so many hours consuming content from influencers and content creators, its only natural that fans feel a sense of kinship and emotional attachment, even if its one-sided. So strong are some of these parasocial ties, a 2024 study revealed that parasocial relationships with YouTubers more effectively filled emotional needs than relationships with “real” acquaintances or colleagues. However, it can bleed into something darker. Add artificial intelligence into the mix and things get even more complex. Many confide in AI tools like ChatGPT as they would friends or romantic partners. By September of 2025, the Cambridge Dictionary definition of parasocial was updated to include the possibility of a relationship with an artificial intelligence. Colin McIntosh, Cambridge Dictionarys chief editor, said the word captures the zeitgeist of 2025, as the publics fascination with celebrities and their lifestyles continues to reach new heights. He noted in a statement: Its interesting from a language point of view because it has made the transition from an academic term to one used by ordinary people in their social media posts. The other words shortlisted this year were pseudonymization, which spiked in interest this year in relation to discussions around protecting personal data. Also memeify as it relates to internet culture. The dictionary added 6,000 new words this year, including internet neologisms like delulu, skibidi and tradwife. Looking ahead, words to watch include glazing, vibey, bias, breathwork, and doomspending.”
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E-Commerce
In 2021, Prada created Candy, an influencer designed to sell perfume. With an appearance rendered using then-state-of-the-art tools, Candys not-quite-real vibe felt straight out of the Silicon (Uncanny) Valley. It was peppy, but cartoonlike, and it was hard to see how Candy could sell perfume it could never smell. Since then, technologies have greatly improved. A brand can now render any persona with a product, create movies with that model persona animated in a realistic way, and show them demonstrating products. By creating their own influencers, brands can keep their advertising budgets down and generate profits. Its possible that the virtual influencers will come for even more human-influencer jobs as the financial opportunities continue to grow. Long before the internet, the idea of influencing existed as sales. People have sold things to others since currency began, and while it takes labor, time, and effort to persuade others to buy what one is selling, different types of techniques and tactics emerged over the years to varying degrees of success. The rise of social media channels such as Facebook, X, Pinterest, and especially Instagram, enabled broader reach for those unable to afford network advertising. As a result of this shift, brands began to outsource marketing to people using these models to share and demonstrate their products and services through brand partnerships. In a short time, the influencer industry has exploded in growth: The global influencer marketing platform market size is set to grow from around $23.6 billion this year to roughly $70.9 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights. Influencing has become an aspirational profession for one in three people ages 18 to 30and for those who succeed, a substantial income awaits.Influencers are successful due to their relatability, charm, resonance, and the ways they represent a lifestyle or objects that others wish to emulate, replicate, or possess. Martha Stewart, an early influencer, started with books before harnessing television and print media to convince thousands that they could also realize the fantasy that she portrayed. Her partnerships with Target, Macys, QVC, and Kohler, brought her endorsements of products, tools, and decorations, into homes, creating a multichannel, multisensory impressionand earned her a $400 million fortune. Celebrities like Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Brooke Shields may not invent what they sell, but they successfully promote products to their fans, building upon the parasocial (one-sided) relationships that fans project onto them. Influencing has gotten increasingly personal over time, with Influencers extending their reach to give us peeks into their homes and lives. But influencers can also be regular people with the attributes and willingness to invite their followers into their lives. Influencers with no celebrity status, but the ability to be persuasive salespeople for brands, are plentiful. Virtual influencers already exist with varying degrees of success and popularity, ranging from animated characters to realistically modeled personas. With the kind of money that is up for grabs, some businesses are creating AI personas or are considering applying these technologies to replace human influencers to maximize profits. Or will they? A sense of agency is what defines successful human influencers. We dont know what they are going to do, or how they are going to do itand that novelty is appealing. Part of what attracts us to influencers are their stories, their lived experiences, and their families. These, in turn, create a brand message that attracts endorsements and piques our interest. Without a story and background, an influencer’s sponsored post is just an ad similar to any other. There is, of course, a price to being an influencer. Megs Mahoney Dusil is the co-owner of the Purse Forum, a premier destination for handbag, jewelry, and brand communities. In The Price of Influence: When Your Life Becomes Your Brand, Dunsil reflects on 20 years of being influential, observing that for her, kids and tragedy were the highest performing topics for platform traffic. She describes the performative aspect of being an influencer as emotional labor in disguise, a tightrope of constant negotiation between the person you are and the persona you project. Good or bad, Dusils realization may pave the way for humans and AI to form influencer partnerships, where their demonstrations and emotional connections are combined with software tools and renderings to provide a quasi-real experience. Human influencers could keep their profits (and their privacy), by using software like Synthesia, Vidyard, Rephrase AI, Adobe Substance 3D, and others to generate facsimiles of themselves, without having to reveal all. They could also benefit from the cost savings of realistic software tools, too, saving money and time on travel by creating the environment they present in a home studio. Time will tell if virtual influencers will make a difference as to how we are persuaded. We already see influencers through mediated channels, so it wont be that different for us to have a window into the fantasy of a digitally realized influencer hearth, rather than their actual home. But will we be comfortable buying products sold to us by beings that arent real? We might. We already have been acclimated to fantasy advertising campaigns. This would just circle us back to celebrity territory where the parasocial relationships we have with the personas selling us things, are those one-sided ones that we project onto them, and are not real. As with most jobs lately, its likely that AI will come for influencers, but with some savvy vibe-coding, influencers may be able to retain their brand partnerships, privacy, and income.
Category:
E-Commerce
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