AI labs are racing to collect deep, persistent personal context—your worries, relationships, and routines—to make assistants that 'get you' better than competitors or even humans. This creates high switching costs and 'relationship lock-in' as the user's model becomes the product's main advantage.
— If competitive advantage depends on harvesting interiority, governance will need to address data rights, portability, and fiduciary duties for AI that act like long-term companions.
EditorDavid
2025.10.11
50% relevant
Face recognition that auto‑organizes users’ personal photos deepens a service’s hold on uniquely personal data, increasing switching costs and creating relationship lock‑in. OneDrive’s default-on rollout and limited opt‑outs exemplify design that harvests intimate context to anchor advantage.
2025.10.07
86% relevant
Zuckerberg argues the most useful AI will 'know us deeply' and that glasses should 'see what we see, hear what we hear' to provide context—an explicit plan to harvest persistent personal interiority for durable advantage and lock‑in.
msmash
2025.10.06
62% relevant
The pendant is marketed as a 'friend' that listens continuously and, per its terms, can collect and use users’ audio and voice for training—an early example of attempting to harvest personal context from an intimacy‑framed device even when the product underperforms.
BeauHD
2025.10.03
55% relevant
The case illustrates how private, context‑rich AI chats become durable records that can be retrieved and used against users, underscoring how assistants ‘harvest interiority’ and why retention/design choices create high switching costs and high stakes.
BeauHD
2025.10.01
78% relevant
Meta’s plan to target ads based on the content of users’ AI chats (and smart‑glasses voice/images) exemplifies harvesting deep personal context from assistants to drive monetization and lock‑in, aligning with the thesis that capturing interiority becomes a competitive advantage.
msmash
2025.09.22
70% relevant
LinkedIn (Microsoft) will default to using members’ professional histories and activity to train its models, and will retain previously collected data even after opt‑out—an example of harvesting persistent personal context to build model advantages and user lock‑in.
Tim Estes
2025.09.21
70% relevant
By calling current AI a 'digital narcotic' built to capture loyalty and proposing fiduciary‑style obligations, the speech targets the business model that monetizes deep personal context to lock users in.
Tyler Cowen
2025.08.23
64% relevant
Mental-health chat uses highly personal context—the very substrate of 'relationship lock-in.' These laws restrict developers from positioning or building features around that intimacy (e.g., therapeutic avatars or claims), potentially reshaping competitive strategies in AI companionship.
Mike Solana
2025.08.21
86% relevant
The article frames xAI’s 'companion (prostitute?)' as part of a race to own users’ inner lives, turning intimacy into lock‑in and creating 'relationship' switching costs — exactly the competitive dynamic described by this idea.
Jen Mediano
2025.08.20
70% relevant
The confessional frame ('I fed my soul into an LLM') shows attachment and reliance, illustrating how persistent, supportive assistants can capture personal context and emotional investment.
Daniel Barcay
2025.08.15
100% relevant
The article describes a 'quiet competition among AI labs to capture the context of its users’ lives' to understand them more completely.