Bluesky leans into AI with Attie, a custom food processor

The team from Bluesky has created another app – and this time, it’s not a social network, but an AI assistant that allows you to create your own schedule, create custom foods, and, one day, vibe-code your app.

At the Atmosphere conference this weekend, Bluesky’s Former CEO, Jay Grabernow chief innovation officer, and Bluesky CTO Paul Frazeepresented an AI program, called Attie, for the first time. Conference attendees will be beta testers for this innovation, which helps Claude of Anthropic under the hood to create a development program built on the Bluesky protocol, AT Protocol (or atproto for short).

“It’s a new thing – it’s not part of the Bluesky program,” explains then CEO Toni Schneider in an interview. (In addition to his role as CEO, Schneider is a partner at Bluesky backer True Ventures.) “We’ve launched a lot of things within Bluesky — Starter Packs and snacks, and all kinds of things. This is an independent thing, and it’s the first thing that’s being built by Jay’s new team.”

With Attie, anyone will be able to create their own feed by writing commands in natural language, just like chatting with other AI chatbots. To use this app, people will log in with their Atmosphere login (meaning their login on any app that runs atproto, including Bluesky). Attie will understand what you’ve been talking about, what you like, and more, because Bluesky is a universal and open system that shares data across all applications.

You can ask Attie questions, such as articles you would like to see or rewrite, and you can use the app to manage your diet, which interests you.

“You control it, you create it, without writing code or knowing how to set up these feeds,” says Schneider. “It’s just the beginning of having more people to build on top of the Atmosphere.”

Furthermore, he adds, “It’s an AI tool, but it’s a human-centric AI tool…

At startup, Attie can be used to create and view these feeds, which will then be available to you within Bluesky or any other atproto software. Over time, the plan is to allow Attie users to write their own social media apps and create third-party tools.

Schneider says that Graber and his team started working on the program a few months ago, which was around the same time he decided to go back to building, instead of running the company.

“I think he realized there was a lot he wanted to do, and just doing the CEO job kept him busy, and he felt like he needed more time,” Schneider told TechCrunch. “When he spent more time, (and) was released, I think it became clear that this is his happy place. He is an amazing leader and a visionary, and we want him to build more things and not worry about running the company,” he says.

Graber says that today, AI is being used by large platforms to serve themselves, not users, by trying to increase the time people spend in their programs, harvest data, and control their algorithms.

“We think AI should serve people, not platforms,” ​​Graber said in announcing Attie. “An open protocol puts this power in the hands of users. You can use it to create your own food, create programs that work the way you want, and find signal in the noise.”

Graber’s decision to refocus on the protocol and marketing was followed by the company’s announcement that now he has a net worth of 100 million dollars from the cycle that ended last year. The group hopes that the news serves as a signal to many people that Bluesky will continue to exist.

“It means we have three years plus years of travel, which is great. This means stability and security for the entire universe,” Schneider tells TechCrunch. It also means the Bluesky team has time to tackle the big challenges ahead, which include adding privacy controls to the protocol and finding a way to monetize the social network. 43.4 million users.

One thing that Schneider assures us will not work, however, is any crypto merger – even the funding of many crypto currencies. That’s something that worried some Bluesky users, who feared that the app would be filled with crypto scams or become a paid tool.

“It’s a type of money that attracted crypto because of its decentralization, and invested in things built on the blockchain that were super decentralized,” Schneider said of Bluesky’s backers in the crypto space. “This is social, so it depends on those who have money to believe in the platform and the opportunity of the environment.”

Instead, the company may try other sources of income. The team has not yet decided if Attie will require a fee, as it is a private beta at the moment. Other ideas being discussed include subscriptions and services to help people who want to host their communities on the protocol.

Schneider, the former CEO of Automattic, the publisher of WordPress.com, sees the potential for Atmosphere to be similar to WordPress in this way.

“At the core of (Atmosphere) is an open process, so anyone can participate,” he says. “You can have all the independent parts, that work together.” It’s WordPress, which has turned into a huge ecosystem with billions of dollars – more than $10 billion a year, now – going through it.

Schneider continues: “So it has become very large, although it is divided into all areas. And this is what we hope, that the Atmosphere has the same ability so that these many programs and services can be together and work together and create an environment.”