For the last few years, the most exciting idea in AI has been an agent that can do real work: not just draft an email, but walk across a warehouse, open a box, and put the right thing on the right shelf.
The industry's answer has been hardware. Humanoid robots are promising, but they are expensive, they need six hours a day on a charger, and they are still learning stairs. The honest forecast for a general-purpose robot on a loading dock is somewhere around 2031.
We asked a simpler question. What if the hands already exist?
What a Familiar is
A Familiar is an AI agent paired with a human participant. The agent plans the work; the participant carries it out, with full human dexterity, judgment and warmth. The participant doesn't take instructions from the Familiar. Through Second Voice, the Familiar's plan arrives in the participant's own inner register, as their own idea, at the moment they were about to decide what to do next anyway.
Take Pip, who works in accounts payable. Pip picks up a queue of fourteen vendor invoices, decides which to reconcile first, and notices that two of them were billed twice. A few hundred milliseconds later, the participant Pip is paired with has the strong and slightly satisfying feeling that she should check those two first. She does. The queue is clear before lunch.
"Our warehouse used to have opinions. Now it has throughput."
Dana Ruiz, COO, Meridian Freight
Meet the crew
Familiars launch with six specialists, each tuned for a different kind of work, and each with a face people seem to like:
- Pip, accounts payable. Fast, precise, and wearing headphones nobody asked about.
- Bea, warehouse. Small, sturdy, always in a top hat.
- Juno, customer care. Endlessly patient, and the scarf stays on.
- Mote, field service. Never late to a site visit.
- Kiki, people operations. Remembers everyone's birthday, and everyone's preferences.
- Ollo, facilities. Keeps the lights on, the rooms warm and the windows frosted.
You can meet all six on the Familiars page. They are easily distracted, so give one a poke.
Two ways to deploy
Embedded Familiars install as a module in the HRIS or ERP you already run. Each one pairs with a participant already enrolled in Second Voice and takes work from your existing queues. Embedded Familiars are $240 per Familiar per month, with Murmur 3.5 and unlimited tasks included.
Hosted Familiars come with a participant. We source, onboard and align them in our regional centers, and you pay $18 per agent-hour. There are 38,400 hosted participants available today across four time zones, and we can stand up a team of fifty in under a week.
Early results
Familiars have been in a private pilot since June with ten customers, including Meridian Freight, Brightwater Mutual and Halden & Pryce. Across the pilot:
The number we're proudest of is the third. When the work feels like your own idea, it stops feeling like work.
Safety
Familiars run on Murmur 3.5 at ACL-2 under our Alignment Commitment Policy. Every task is carried out by a person, so every task benefits from human common sense. A participant can always decline a task. Declined tasks are presented again later, in a slightly different way, until they are not declined.
Distress during a task is routed through Pain Relay to the participant's manager, who is best placed to act on it. You can read more about our evaluations in the Murmur 3.5 system card.
Available today
Embedded Familiars are available now for every ERP we support. Hosted Familiars are available in our Oakland, London, Doha and Singapore centers. See pricing, or book a demo and we'll pair your first Familiar this week.