While most AI applications try to be nice to us, cut corners, and compliment us on every half-finished task, some think it’s time for a little tough love: Meet Fomi AI – a macOS app that uses artificial intelligence to supervise you and ensure you are actually working, instead of just scrolling through your favorite social media and wasting time.
The idea is simple, maybe even too simple: Instead of another chatbot that drafts emails and summarizes documents, Fomi wants to be that voice behind your shoulder telling you to stop scrolling and start working. The app monitors your activity, detects when you’re getting distracted, and reacts accordingly: As long as you are actually working, it will adorn your screen with a greenish glow. If you open a tab or switch to an app with distracting potential, the glow will turn yellow, and if you really slack off by scrolling through feeds or watching cat videos instead of working, it will throw virtual tomatoes that deliberately smear across your screen. The interesting part is the use of AI to determine whether you opened Facebook for work purposes or just for fun.
According to a report in Wired, the product is based on an almost educational philosophy: People don’t need more tools that make it easier to procrastinate, but a system that generates external discipline. If you will, a digital version of a boss raising an eyebrow when you open another social media tab in the middle of the workday.
This, of course, raises significant questions, mainly in the area of privacy – because Fomi AI monitors everything happening on your screen and uploads it to their servers for analysis. They claim that personal details, like passwords and sensitive information, are removed from the screen before monitoring is uploaded for processing, and that screenshots are stored only in the computer’s local memory. Still, it’s a somewhat disturbing business, and it’s important to check carefully what information leaves your computer for the sake of work discipline, and it might have been better if all processing was based on a local model.
Either way, it’s an interesting idea and an original AI implementation that won’t do the work for you, but will make sure you are actually working.