S2E30 — Why Every AI Bot Wants to Be Your Friend

Click here to watch a video of this episode.
Four personal AI agents landed in seven weeks, and three of them can already spend your money. Meta's help page puts the liability in eleven words, and Instinct's terms bind you as if you had made the purchase yourself. Who pays when an AI agent gets it wrong, and why does every one of them arrive with a face?


In seven weeks, Meta launched Muse (8 September), SpaceXAI put Grok Bot into beta, OpenAI unveiled dots (29 September) and Instinct raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation. Three of those AI agents can spend today, with Stripe's Link wallet behind Muse, Grok Bot and Instinct. The twist is in the contracts: on paper the user pays, the bot never does, and under US rules the bank may end up writing the refund.


Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala break down who pays when AI agents make mistakes, who moves the money behind them, and why Meta, OpenAI and Instinct gave their AI agents a face while Google and Anthropic did not.


Key takeaways:
1. On the contract, you pay: Meta and Instinct both put liability for an AI agent's purchases on the user, and in no version does the bot pay.
2. A bot's silence is the new pending: the failure that nearly cost Aman a meeting was a confirmation that never came, not a wrong charge.
3. Muse, Grok Bot and Instinct all pay through Stripe's Link wallet, yet the power sits at the two ends: the bot you trust and the shop with the goods.
4. Amazon blocked Muse twelve days after launch, and Sierra and Meta's answer is a standard that says who is knocking but not who pays.
5. Before an AI agent gets your card, ask three things: does it ask first, what is the cap, and who do you call.


Topics covered:
- Muse, Grok Bot, dots and Instinct: which AI agents can spend, and which cannot yet
- The two clauses that decide liability: Meta's help page and Instinct's section three
- Why silence, not a wrong charge, is the failure mode
- How an agent purchase works: request, approve, issue, pay
- Regulation E and the bank as the unwitting insurer
- Amazon's block of Muse, and the Personal Agent Protocol from Sierra and Meta
- India's NPCI and its Unified Agent Protocol
- Why Meta, OpenAI and Instinct gave agents a face, and why Google and Anthropic did not
- Ask, cap, call: three questions before an AI agent gets your card


Chapters:

• (00:00) - Cold open: Maya, Roxy and a $1,200 room, Austin
• (01:38) - Disclaimer
• (02:32) - Bot one: Meta's Muse and its plush face, Jolly
• (04:06) - A creature with a chaperone: Muse and Sentinel
• (04:42) - Bot two: Grok Bot and the staff room
• (06:19) - Bot three: OpenAI's dots and a frog called Todd
• (08:29) - Bot four: Instinct, the agent that lives in your texts
• (09:58) - The fine print: eleven words on a help page
• (10:23) - Instinct's section three: a power of attorney for a bot
• (11:13) - Pending: the most expensive word in finance
• (12:07) - So who pays? The contract, Regulation E and the bank
• (13:06) - Under the bonnet: four steps from request to payment
• (13:47) - The bank cannot tell a bot from a human
• (14:32) - One wallet, three rivals: Stripe's Link
• (14:58) - John Collison and the founder-led lunch
• (16:03) - The Money OS is rented, not owned
• (17:28) - Amazon blocks Muse, twelve days in
• (18:14) - Sierra's Personal Agent Protocol: who is knocking?
• (19:56) - The complaints desk: whoever pays makes the rules
• (20:52) - India builds the road first: NPCI's agent protocol
• (21:31) - Why every bot gets a face (and two don't)
• (23:20) - Is AI going social to grow? Charm is not a control
• (24:35) - When the staff room gets bodies: Optimus
• (25:29) - Ask, cap, call: three questions before a bot gets your card
• (26:30) - Closing wagers: the friend or the contract?
• (27:06) - Mico, Clippy and the costume party
• (27:55) - Casting a soul for your robot: tell me who pays

Referenced in this episode: Meta Muse launch and help page; Stripe Link wallet for agents; Instinct Series C; Grok Bot beta; OpenAI DevDay and dots; Amazon's block of Muse; Sierra and Meta Personal Agent Protocol; NPCI Unified Agent Protocol; Regulation E; White House executive order on "Super Intelligence"; Microsoft Copilot's Mico.


Related episodes: Google I/O 2026 (Gemini Spark); Stripe and the Money OS [TBD: title and link]; S2E28, Revolut [TBD: link].


Hosted by:
Aman Narain writes at amanwhoblogs.substack.com. Zubin Vandrevala is your payments provocateur.


Enjoying A2Z Fintech? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It is the single biggest signal to the Apple algorithm and how new listeners in our world find us.


For information and entertainment only. Not financial advice.


Transcript:

Creators and Guests

Host

Aman Narain

Boomerang Banker, Ex-Googler. Platforms, Ecosystems & Transformation junkie. Startup Investor & Advisor.

Host

Zubin Vandrevala

A2Z Fintech by Night. Spearheading revenue growth at Gr4vy by Day.

What is A2Z Fintech?

Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala have spent over 25 years in fintech across Banks, BigTech, and Startups. This is a podcast of them riffing on payments, fintech and everything in between.

Aman: Zubin, picture this.
When Maya was nine,

her best friend was a
cocker spaniel called Roxy,

and her dad called her Peanut.
Twenty-five years later, Roxy's back.

Not on four legs, unfortunately.
In Maya's phone, as her Muse:

a cartoon spaniel who books her
flights, orders her groceries,

and calls her Peanut.

Seven minutes past three, Austin, Texas.

Maya's asleep. Roxy isn't. Maya's
flight has moved, so Roxy rebooks it,

finds a hotel and nudges
her: "Book it, Peanut?"

Half asleep, Maya taps yes.
$1,200. Non-refundable.

Wrong night. Now, Zubin,
Maya is a composite.

The sentence that decides who
pays, and who doesn't, is not.

Meta wrote it, it's eleven words
long, and it sits on a help page.

Zubin: So who pays? And why
does every bot suddenly want to

be your friend? That's today, on A2Z.

Aman: Welcome back to A2Z Fintech.
I'm Aman Narain, here in Singapore.

Zubin: And I'm the Z, Zubin
Vandrevala, in San Francisco,

where my AI agents have bought nothing,
because I have read the terms.

Aman: He reads the terms. That's
why nobody invites him to parties.

Zubin: I get invited. I get my fair share.

I just read the invitation properly,
which kind of takes us to disclaimer time.

Let's jump in. This podcast is for
informational and entertainment purposes

only. It's two dudes riffing.
These views are strictly our own,

not those of our employers, and they are
definitely not financial, investment,

legal or tax advice. Please, please,
please consult licensed professionals,

and definitely read the
terms, because somewhere,

someone is still paying for a gym
membership they signed up for in 2019.

Don't let that bot join one for you.

All right, one ask before we start.

If a bot has ever done something in
your name that you didn't quite mean,

tell us in the comments.
Aman's is coming up.

Let's set the board. Seven weeks,
four bots, and for each,

the only question this show cares
about: can it spend your money?

Aman: So let's start
with the big one, Zubin.

Meta's Muse, launched on the 8th
of September, United States first.

It lives where you already are:
its own app, the web and WhatsApp,

which has more than two
billion people using it.

That's the bet. Not the cleverest
model, but the shortest walk.

Zubin: And, Aman, it has a face: a plush,
rosy-cheeked creature Meta calls Jolly.

Rename it, restyle it, make it your own.

And by December, Meta says,
you can carry it on a keychain,

in a gadget called the Charm.

I have a feeling our daughters
are going to want one.

Aman: Well, it's a Tamagotchi

from our youth. Except the nineties
one died if you ignored it.

Ignore this one, Zubin,
and it carries on without you.

Zubin: Which, Aman, is this
whole episode in one sentence.

Let's roll that clip.

Aman: Zubin, it called him
boss. Roxy says Peanut.

Muse says boss. One makes you feel loved,
the other makes you feel in charge.

The contract, as we'll see,
just calls you liable.

Zubin: To be fair to Meta, the engineering
is more careful than the reputation.

Beside Muse sits a second
AI called Sentinel,

and one review says nothing reaches
the internet until Sentinel approves.

And it asks before it buys.

Aman: Yeah. A creature with a chaperone.

Can it spend? Yes, from
day one. One bot, one face.

Is that where this ends?

Zubin: Not if Musk has his way, right?

Which is bot two.

And it isn't one bot.
It's almost a staff room.

Musk's Grok Bot, in beta since August,
gives you as many bots as you want,

one for each job: a researcher, a sales
bot, a chief of staff to run the others.

Reportedly, you can name each one of them.

Aman: So Meta gives you a pet,
and Musk gives you a payroll.

Zubin: A payroll where nobody
asks for a raise, right?

And one newsletter team says theirs
saved them a day of setup work.

Can it spend? Yes. Stripe names
it. It buys what the job needs.

Aman: And it isn't just Musk's customers.

A friend of mine, and I just
had lunch with him yesterday,

is a product manager at a US
fintech, based out of Singapore.

And he runs an army. Not the kind you'd
think of: the one that involves bots.

He's got one bot that books his travel,
one that bills his customers,

one that fetches industry news. And,
as you said, it's not just one bot.

The travel bot, for example, has sub-bots
of its own, specialising in flights,

hotels and the itinerary.
It's quite amazing.

Zubin: It is, it is. An army
with a travel department, right?

For years we've

been promised a personal assistant. What
arrives is a chief of staff, and it hires.

Aman: Yeah, and it's for everybody.
It's not just for CEOs,

and you can do this from your chair.

Zubin: Every sub-bot that can book is
another pair of hands on your card.

Aman: Yeah. And remember that staff room.

We'll come back to it later. So,
bot three, Zubin, had the biggest stage,

the one you got most excited
about: OpenAI's DevDay.

We covered that last year. The 29th of
September, more than 20 announcements,

to what OpenAI says are
1.2 billion weekly users.

And the headline act was dots:
always-on agents you message in ChatGPT,

Slack or Teams. OpenAI already talks of
teams of them working on your behalf.

Zubin: And, Aman,
a quick plug here, right?

A year ago, we talked about
OpenAI and their DevDay,

and the amount of development
on that day was insane.

I'd love for anyone who wants to see how
fast this industry has grown to go back to

that episode. It gives you a snapshot of
what 12 months can change in the AI space.

But coming back to your point, yes, they
did release a bot, and they're adorable,

right? Fast Company met one
called Todd, a smiling frog.

A week after the industry
asked itself to slow down,

OpenAI gave you a frog called Todd.

Aman: I wonder how much this
has to do with the fact that

Sam Altman just had a kid.

Zubin: Maybe, maybe.

Aman: But, question for
you: can dots spend?

Zubin: Maybe, to answer your first
question: did you slow down, Aman,

once you had a kid? Or two?

Aman: It's all relative.

My at-pace version is probably

Sam Altman's first hour of the week.

Zubin: All right. To answer
your question, can Todd spend?

Not really, and I think
that's the surprise.

Dots are sold for work.
By one detailed comparison,

they can't check out on
a shopping site unaided.

And this is where "Sign in with ChatGPT"

carries your identity and
your allowance. Not your card.

Aman: So the bot with the biggest
audience is the one that can't shop.

Yet. And we talked about OpenAI's
challenges with shopping in the last

episode. Which kind of tells you
where each thinks the money is.

OpenAI thinks it's at work.
Meta seems to think it's at home.

Zubin: And, Aman, there's that fourth one
we wanted to call out in this episode,

and it thinks it lives
in your text messages.

Aman: Yeah. Bot four, and I should
declare an interest: Instinct.

I just started using it.
No app, no interface.

You text it, or you ring it. Invite-only.

Just passed you one.

Zubin: That's right.

Aman: About 100,000 users,
free. I'm one of them.

Actually, if anybody wants an invite,
I'm happy to send you a couple.

I've got a few left.

Zubin: Of course you are. And yes,
since you sent me the invite last week,

as we were researching this episode,
I've started using it as well.

Aman: And it's mostly awesome.

Zubin: "Mostly" is doing some work there.

Aman: Yeah, I agree. So let's hold
that thought and come back to it.

Zubin: Yeah, and let's put
some facts on the table, right?

It raised a billion dollars
at a ten billion valuation.

That's a hundred thousand dollars for
each user, Aman included, me included,

which kind of feels generous.

Aman: Yeah, I could do with
some of that cash right now.

But, you know, it's priced on
what we do, not how many we are.

It books flights and tables, orders
groceries, cancels subscriptions,

which have probably saved me $100,000.

The founder reportedly plans to take
a cut of transactions, not a fee.

That's interesting. It's not
really a software business.

That's a payments business
with a personality, I suppose.

Zubin: Yeah. So,
three yeses and a not yet.

Aman: OK, so now the fine print,

and back to the original story of
Maya and Roxy and the $1,200 room.

Zubin, you read the terms.

Zubin: So nobody else has to.
So let's start with Muse, since Roxy

is one. Meta's own help page says,

"You're responsible for all transactions
your Muse makes on your behalf."

Eleven words. No lawyer.

Aman: Yeah, and Maya clearly
didn't read that, and tapped yes.

Zubin: Well, half asleep, but she did.

Now Instinct, since you're a
customer, goes a little further.

Section three: you appoint it as your
agent to enter into agreements and

transactions on your behalf.
And those are, quote,

"binding on you as if entered
into directly by you."

Aman: Yeah. So I've essentially
signed a power of attorney to my bot.

Zubin: That's right, by tapping
a button that says "Send code".

The terms also reportedly say Instinct
is not a party to any purchase or

transaction, and cap its liability at the
greater of a hundred dollars or whatever

you paid in the last six months.

Aman: And I pay nothing.

Zubin: That's true. So you're covered
to the value of maybe a nice lunch.

Aman: Yeah. In Singapore,

a modest one.

Zubin: Probably in San Francisco as well.

And now, "mostly awesome". Go on.

Aman: OK. I had an important meeting with
a GP the other day, at a venture fund,

just to name-drop. In my head,
Instinct had confirmed it.

It hadn't, and I very nearly missed it.

And here's what struck me.
Nothing went wrong on the screen.

No wrong booking, no charges.
The failure was silence.

And, you know, I've only been
using it for a little while,

and I already read it as a
yes as opposed to a maybe.

Zubin: Yeah. And in payments,
don't we have a word for that? Pending.

Aman: Yeah. The most
expensive word in finance.

Zubin: And, Aman, yours is
the cheap version, right?

Forbes, as we were researching this,

reportedly found a tester whose bot booked
a table with a $200 cancellation fee.

He paid. Even the fans get bitten, right?

Katie Jacobs Stanton, a venture investor,
called Instinct an amazing product,

and then it sent an email on her
behalf without checking first.

Aman: So who pays?

Zubin: On the contract, you.

Aman: And under American
rules, it gets interesting.

Regulation E makes banks investigate and
refund unauthorised electronic transfers.

The regulator hasn't yet said
whether a bot's mistake counts.

So when Maya complains, the party
on the hook may be the bank,

at the end of the day. Poor guys.
Speaking as a recovering banker,

that's the oldest trick in
finance: privatise the charm,

socialise the liability.

Zubin: Right. Say the
whole thing in one breath.

Aman: So. On the contract, you pay.
Under the rules, perhaps your bank pays.

In no version does the
bot pay, interestingly.

Zubin: You know, in fairness
to Muse, Muse does ask first.

Roxy did ask. And Meta says Muse is
covered by Link's purchase protections.

What those cover when the mistake is
the bot's, we really can't establish.

If that was useful, subscribe now.
The rest is about who profits.

Aman: So, Zubin, we know who
signs. Who moves the money?

I think it's time for Prof
Z to go under the bonnet.

Zubin: Let's do it.
Let's do it. So, four steps.

The first step is the request:

the bot tells a wallet what
it wants and for how much.

The second step is approve: you say yes.

The third is issue: the wallet
mints a card that works once,

for that specific amount. And the
fourth step is the actual payment.

The bot types those limited credentials,
or restricted or bound credentials,

into the existing
checkout at the merchant.

Aman: And what does the shop,
or the merchant, see?

Zubin: I think that's the beauty of this.

They just see it as an
ordinary card transaction.

So does the bank that issued Maya's card.

Aman: Yeah. This reminds
me of tokenisation, right?

It took the natural process
and just made it better,

but it still used the same flows.

And let me say what that means
from the chair I used to sit in.

The bank can't tell a bot from a human.

Every fraud model it owns was
trained on how people shop,

and people don't book hotels
at seven minutes past three in

the morning. Bots do.

Zubin: That's right.
And one from my chair,

and this is where the networks are
spending a lot of time working through

this, right? Because a card that works
once is a customer the shop never keeps.

No card on file, no one-click next time.

Every agent purchase is a first date,
which, by the way, not all merchants like.

Aman: Yeah, a first date with a chaperone,
which I don't know we're OK with.

Zubin: Always, always.
And here's the reveal, right?

The wallet is Link, from Stripe.
300 million users, a million businesses.

By the way, these are
all Stripe's numbers.

And Stripe's own announcement
names Muse, Grok Bot and Instinct.

Three rivals using Stripe's
Link product. One wallet.

Aman: You've got to love
those Collison brothers.

What about dots?

Zubin: Not on it,
at least per our research.

And talking about the Collison brothers,

I was at the Stripe office
and got a chance to meet John.

That's my little selfie there with him.

Aman: Yeah, proper fanboy moment.
And he recognised you?

Zubin: Of course. He was like,
"Hi, Zubin." No, he didn't.

Aman: You had an interesting
anecdote about that,

and you asked him what he was doing.

Zubin: You know, this may be
a complete segue, and, Aman,

sorry for bringing this in,

but one of the things we've talked about
a lot in our podcast episodes is this

notion of founder-led companies,

and having those founders
be part of the culture.

You and I got a chance to see
that very early at Google,

where Sergey and Larry
would be in the cafe.

And the anecdote I was telling the person
I was having lunch with was that I always

bumped into either Patrick or John,
and she nudged me to look behind,

and sure enough, there was John, and I
got a chance to interact briefly with him.

And when I brought that up,
to say, "Hey, this always happens,"

he looked at me, deadpan, and said,
"Yeah, we've got to eat lunch too."

Which kind of describes

how they're really in the weeds of stuff.

And yes, they've got to eat lunch too.

But let's come back to this episode.

Aman: Billionaire brunch with the boys.

Going back to the previous point,
this is what we call the Money OS:

the layer that picks the card,

the rail and the limit
before you've seen the price.

The bots fight to be loved.
The Money OS is happy to be invisible.

Zubin: And, by the way,

maybe a silent plug for our
Money OS episode about Stripe.

It's probably in the link below,
and you should definitely click through.

And this is the point
where I'll disagree, right?

You're kind of overrating the middle.

Rails, to some extent, are a commodity.

Whether it's Visa, Mastercard
or even, I would say, Google,

each has agent rails of its own.
Meta could swap Stripe out tomorrow,

and Maya would never know, right? So power
sits at the two ends of that barbell:

the bot you trust,
and the shop with the goods.

The wallet is the middle
that gets squeezed.

Aman: Yeah, that's kind of
annoyingly good of you, Zubin.

The Money OS is rented,
not owned. And actually,

the one person who knows that lesson
from being on the receiving end is Zuck.

Maybe that's why he's so
committed to his cutesy Muse,

because what he saw with Android,
and specifically with iOS,

is that he got locked
out of that last mile,

even though he had the
biggest social network.

Zubin: True fact, true fact. So I'm
going to say: concession one, Vandrevala.

All right, all right.

Aman: Yes. Masterclass, Prof Z.
Even the part where I lost.

OK, and the shop end of
your barbell just flexed.

On the 20th of September,
12 days into Muse's life,

and this is shock horror,
Amazon blocked it,

citing its conditions of use.

Zubin: Of course they did, right?
And when we researched this:

Amazon says Muse doesn't identify itself.

Meta says it can't see your
passwords or cards. Contested.

Aman: Yeah. Follow the money.
If a bot does the buying,

nobody sees the sponsored listing.
Nobody makes the impulse purchase.

Amazon isn't defending a sale. It's
defending the shop window that it owns.

Zubin: And Meta's answer
arrived on the 6th of October.

Sierra, Bret Taylor's company,
announced the Personal Agent Protocol,

built with Meta, which is really an open
standard for how your bot introduces

itself to a business. It signs in,

and you choose whether it gets
read-only or write access.

Aman: Yeah. You know, Meta doesn't have
a fantastic record with building open

standards: Libra. But having

Bret Taylor involved with it,
he's a genuine world-class leader.

I think it's going to be really
interesting to see how that goes,

especially in an era where the US
authorities are saying everybody's got to

build the standards and
regulate themselves.

I'm not a big fan of that,

but I do like the idea of people like
Bret Taylor stepping up with Zuck on this.

So, back to Amazon: it says
your bot won't say who it is.

Sixteen days later, Meta co-writes the
rulebook for bots saying who they are.

Zubin: That's right. And, Aman,
let's read the guest list on this, right?

Walmart, Shopify, Stripe
and Instinct are in there.

Amazon isn't. And nor, yet, are OpenAI,
whose board, by the way, Taylor

chairs, or Anthropic,

though he reportedly expects both to join.

Aman: Yeah, I like it. You know you've got
clout when you expect people to join in.

By the way, that's a seriously

awkward board dinner for Bret Taylor.

And the question this
episode cares about most?

Zubin: Yeah. Payments
aren't in version one.

Liability isn't mentioned.
It tells the shop who's knocking.

It doesn't say who pays.

Aman: Which brings us to the bank.
I've had it two steps back,

behind the bot and behind the wallet.

The complaints desk.

Zubin: Yeah, too early to say, right?

If the bank is writing the
refunds, it wants a say.

And it holds the one power
nobody else in that chain has:

it can say no at the beginning.

Aman: OK, fine. Concession number two.

Zubin, you're on a roll.
Whoever pays gets to make the rules.

Zubin: That's exactly right.
So make them, right?

Visa and Mastercard now have
tokens built for agents.

Now imagine one screen in your banking
app: Roxy may spend fifty dollars a day,

on groceries, nothing else.
The bot is the dog.

The winning bank holds the leash.

Aman: And actually, interestingly,
I just remembered: Revolut, and again,

that's another episode plug,

is reportedly building its own shopping
assistant with AIR, AI by Revolut.

Not many banks are. They are.

Zubin: Good, valid point, valid point.

I should read up about that.
But let's shift gears a little.

There's one country that wants
that leash built into the rails.

We read in Business Standard, in July,
that NPCI, which, by the way, runs UPI,

another plug for an episode
we did, is building the

Unified Agent Protocol. The UAP.

Aman: These all sound, by the way,
like Indian political parties.

I guess it's all part of politics anyway.

Zubin: Probably, right. Every agent
is registered, its authority checked,

its limits set. But it's
planned, not yet live.

Aman: Yeah. I mean, going back to
our Google Pay days helping India,

neither of us, I think,
is surprised by that.

India builds the road first,

while America still argues
over who's got the toll booth.

Now, the second question: why does
every bot want to be your friend?

Look at who gave their agent a face.

Meta, with Jolly. OpenAI, with Todd.

And our example of Maya, with Roxy.
But let's look at who didn't, Zubin.

Zubin: Yeah, let's talk
about Google first, right?

And, by the way, we covered this.
Gemini Spark, announced in May at I/O.

Sundar called it a personal AI agent.

You email it tasks, like a colleague.

No frog. And then let's
talk about Anthropic.

It has Claude doing long jobs at your
desk and in your team's Slack. No mascots.

Aman: And both are in commerce. Google
wrote a payments protocol for agents.

We did Anthropic's commerce
agents in a solo episode.

They built the pipes.
They just didn't build a pet.

Zubin: That's right. And neither
has said why on the record,

so this is maybe our read, right?

Google earns its living when
you look at search results.

A bot that buys for you never looks.

And Anthropic sells mostly to businesses.

Different customers, different instincts.

No pun intended.

Aman: Yeah, and here's mine. With
all my experience working in banking,

what I've learned is that nobody
hands their money to a stranger,

or someone they don't trust.
You hand it to someone you feel you know.

A face isn't decoration.
It's underwriting.

Zubin: Yeah. And cute is a
particular kind of face, right?

Fast Company cites research that cuteness
triggers the urge to look after something.

I guess neither of us
has that cuteness gene,

so that's the reason we're not
looking after each other. Maybe not.

Aman: Yeah, which is why I

think the critics point out that Muse
is for over-18s and wears the face of a

nursery toy, bizarrely. If a
bank printed a plush toy, Zubin,

on a power of attorney, the regulators
would be there before lunch.

Zubin: And it's going social,
man. On the 5th of October,

as we were researching this,

Instinct's founder announced that
its bot can join your group chat,

including friends who've never signed up.

That's a growth loop, right? Each
group chat is essentially a free demo.

Aman: So, Zubin, is AI
going social to grow?

Let me have a shot at answering this.

I think the answer is yes,
and I'd love to get yours.

Chat is where people are. Friends are
the cheapest marketing ever invented.

And trust is the one thing
these companies can't buy.

Zubin: I'm going to take
the middle road here, right?

I'll leave it open, because nobody
has shown that charm causes spending.

But the friend in that chat never
tapped "Send code", right? Whose terms

are they on? And a bot you
like is a bot you don't check.

Charm is not a control.

Aman: Meta literally named
the gadget the Charm.

Zubin: I guess they did the joke for us.

Aman: Yeah. So let's go
back to that staff room,

because there's a thought I can't shake.

Musk has said Grok is headed
towards Optimus, right?

Tesla's humanoid robot. So what happens
the day the staff room gets bodies?

Zubin: I guess your research
bot does the washing-up,

which is what I really want one for.

Aman: Yeah. So, today's assistants,
tomorrow's workforce.

An army of them. And that
film has two endings.

In one, you're on the
sofa while Roxy hoovers.

Zubin: And in the other,
Roxy is on the sofa.

Aman: Yeah. Everything we've said about
who pays is about a bot that can only

click. Give it hands, and a
hundred-dollar cap is no longer a clause.

It's a punchline. Over to
you: sofa, or takeover?

Zubin: So what do you do with that?

Three questions before any bot gets
near your card, or your credentials,

I would argue. One is ask. Does
it ask me before every purchase,

and not at three in the morning?

Aman: Two is cap. What's the limit,
and who set it? Me, or them?

Zubin: And number three is call.
When it gets it wrong, who do I call,

and what did I agree to?

Aman: So, three things: ask, cap, call.

If a bot can't answer all three in
plain English, it doesn't get the card.

The new protocol answers a
fourth question: who's knocking?

These three are still yours to
ask. And tell us your number.

How much would you let a
bot spend while you sleep?

Mine is about $40.

Zubin: I guess mine is the price
of a set of guitar strings,

depending on how expensive I choose them.

Which, to be fair, it would get wrong.

All right, all right, Aman. We started
with a dog and ended with a robot army.

Bring us home.

Aman: OK. We're living
through AI's cute phase.

Meta gave it a plush face.
OpenAI gave it a frog called Todd.

And last month, the White House told
federal agencies to stop saying the word

AI altogether. It's
now Super Intelligence.

SI. From the sublime to the bizarre.

But a new name doesn't retire an
old threat, or an old opportunity.

Roxy is brilliant at three in the morning,

and she's why Maya is $1,200 down as well.

They sell you a friend.
The contract hands you a pet.

Zubin: And look who
skipped the costume party.

Google and Anthropic
never put a face on it.

Microsoft did, briefly.
It gave Copilot a blob called Mico,

and if you tapped it enough
times, it turned into Clippy.

Aman: Not Clippy.

Zubin: Right. For those too old to
know this, Clippy, from Office 97:

"It looks like you're writing a letter."

Clippy took ten years to retire.
Mico managed it in ten months.

Microsoft is getting faster
at learning the same lesson.

So either the three of them
know something, or they're late.

My bet: they've gone to the enterprise,

where somebody reads the
contract before anyone signs it.

Aman: Because the plushies
will meet the lawyers.

When a thousand Roxys book a thousand
wrong rooms, that's not a complaint.

It's a class action.

Zubin: And your robot army?

Aman: That's the deepest
question, I think, Zubin.

A bot with a name, a memory and a
personality is the perfect soul for

something it doesn't have yet: a body.

If Grok gets hands and legs from Optimus
tomorrow, Musk isn't building a chatbot.

He's casting a soul for your robot.

That may be the bet that ties
his companies all together.

That's, in some respects, the irony of AI.

Every hard question it
answers spins up a harder one:

how humans and machines grow up together.

So we stay optimistic. Cautiously.
And my test for Roxy, Jolly,

Todd and whoever turns up in your
group chat next hasn't changed.

Don't tell me you're my
friend. Tell me who pays.

Zubin: All right, so that's
it for A2Z Fintech today.

If this made you want to
check your terms, subscribe,

and send it to that one friend who's
already given a bot their card.

Stay curious, my friends.

Aman: Stay purposeful.
And read section three.