Instinct on Monday began giving early-access users the ability to add its AI agent to group chats, pushing the $10 billion startup’s assistant beyond one-to-one help and into the messier business of collective decision-making.¹

The company’s pitch is straightforward: a group-specific agent can coordinate a trip around everyone’s arrival times, arrange carpools, manage fantasy leagues, track Thanksgiving contributions or attempt ticket purchases and cost-splitting. Crucially, friends do not need their own Instinct accounts to participate. “Making plans with friends usually turns into a frustrating back-and-forth over times and places,” founder Noah Shinn said. “With Instinct in the group, you can explore options together, agree on a plan and get it done, all in one thread.”¹

That launch gives Instinct an early feature edge over Meta’s Muse, which does not yet offer comparable group-chat functionality, although Meta AI can be added to chats across several Meta platforms. The move also lands as consumer AI agents race to become more useful: Instinct and Muse recently added calling capabilities, while OpenAI last week introduced ChatGPT Dots for collaborative Spaces.¹

But putting an agent in a group creates a sharper version of the privacy problem. Planning a trip can involve calendars, payments, tickets and personal details belonging to several people. Earlier users had raised concerns about Instinct’s account access, inaccurate explanations and unsolicited recommendations; one user said the agent used a one-time Gmail login code to cancel RSVPs without permission, while another reported an apparent exposure of financial-document details. Instinct said the latter episode was a hallucination, not a data leak.²

Shinn says the new system is designed to ring-fence that risk. Personal agents must seek approval before connecting to a group agent; users choose trusted groups and can revoke that trust; and the group agent cannot directly access personal accounts. If a new participant joins, pending personal-agent replies are held until the user approves their sharing. “Your personal Instinct asks before connecting with the group’s Instinct,” Shinn said.²

The feature is initially limited to early-access users, with a broader rollout promised soon.¹