Home Bill Gates backs Likewise, an early-state startup and launches Pix, a chatbot

Bill Gates backs Likewise, an early-state startup and launches Pix, a chatbot

Bill Gates has always been forward-thinking, and his love affair with anything new and shiny seems to take some by surprise at times. But this week’s choices for Gates are not a surprise with everything AI being talked about in the news. Microsoft invested billions in OpenAI to get early access to generative AI that creates text and images when answering prompts.

The billionaire, eccentric entrepreneur Bill Gates has talked about AI for some time and even declared in March that “the Age of AI has begun.” However, Likewise may have a tough job gaining the traction needed with its audience that has heard nothing but AI AI AI AI this entire year. Likewise will have to show that its tech works better than another technology because most have already “been there, done that.”

Pix is the bot’s name — for some reason, I called it “Pixi-boy” when referring to it. Pix will run on OpenAI, complete with natural-language processing technology that will learn users’ preferences and spew out recommendations, propositions, and proposals — for any type of entertainment, e.g., TV shows, movies, books, songs, and podcasts.

Speaking about Pix, Ian Morris, chief executive of Likewise, said, “That personal agent aspect is going to be a big part of what we see people doing in the next couple of years, and it’s something we’re looking to really define.”

Likewise, has collected over 600 million consumer data points and will be able to distinguish its media-recommendation platform from all other chatbots. This is not a recommendation software already existing on streaming services — the chatbot Pix will suggest content across all platforms to users when they text or email. Yes, you can ask questions via its app to give added definitions to Pix’s suggestions to you.

The Silicon Valley News Has Some Big Players in Chatbot

Microsoft, Google, and Meta use and incorporate AI tech into their product offerings. Elon Musk was an early investor in Open AI with his startup xAL, Bret Taylor (former Twitter chairman) is working on AI, but he’s a little stingy with the details, and Reid Hoffman (big-time capital firm Greylock) is scaling back his role to work on AI.

The Wall Street Journal says, “Pix will be updated in real-time with content currently available on streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Max.

Featured Image Credit: Mohamed_hassan; Pixabay; Thank you!

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The ReadWrite Editorial policy involves closely monitoring the tech industry for major developments, new product launches, AI breakthroughs, video game releases and other newsworthy events. Editors assign relevant stories to staff writers or freelance contributors with expertise in each particular topic area. Before publication, articles go through a rigorous round of editing for accuracy, clarity, and to ensure adherence to ReadWrite's style guidelines.

Deanna Ritchie
Former Editor

Deanna was an editor at ReadWrite until early 2024. Previously she worked as the Editor in Chief for Startup Grind, Editor in Chief for Calendar, editor at Entrepreneur media, and has over 20+ years of experience in content management and content development.

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