Hark Releases Personal AI Agent That Can Shop, Pay Bills and Manage Online Tasks

Hark has released Hark Pro, a personal AI agent that can handle tasks such as buying groceries, booking cars, paying bills and refilling a child’s lunch card. The service is available on the web and through iOS and Android apps, with a free tier plus $20 and $100 monthly plans, arriving about a year before Hark’s first hardware products are expected in 2027.

At the center of Hark Pro is Handoff, a cloud-based browser agent that carries out work across websites on a user’s behalf. Hark says the system can operate as many as six browsers simultaneously and sign in to millions of sites.

The company is pitching Hark Pro as an assistant that does more than wait for direct prompts. Its Action Buttons can surface tasks based on connected accounts and let users approve actions such as paying a bill or canceling a service.

One example from Hark involves identifying that a child’s lunch account is running low and offering to refill it. Another involves recognizing from email that a user has booked a flight but has not yet reserved a hotel.

The service can connect to personal information including email, calendars, files and payment details. Hark says passwords and card information are kept in an encrypted vault that company employees cannot access.

Hark Pro also includes persistent memory intended to help the assistant retain relevant information over time. Projects can organize longer-running tasks, while customizable Panels can display information from services including Strava, Spotify and Venmo.

The agent is designed to perform browser-based work in the background rather than requiring users to navigate each step themselves. In one demonstration, Handoff used DoorDash to place a Filet-O-Fish order. The process took several minutes and stopped before payment so the user could approve the transaction.

The demonstration also highlighted a tradeoff in Hark’s approach. The agent did not necessarily complete the task faster than a person could have done manually, but Hark’s argument is that users can delegate the work and focus on something else while the system handles the intermediate steps.

Hark says the interface lets users watch the agent as it navigates websites, and the company says the system seeks approval before actions that require user authorization.

The product enters a market where other companies are already offering similar software. Meta released Muse four weeks earlier with capabilities including booking, purchasing and negotiating. Muse also uses the same three-tier pricing structure: free, $20 per month and $100 per month.

Hark’s $20 plan is advertised as providing twice the usage of the free version, while the $100 tier offers 10 times the usage.

The software release comes well ahead of Hark’s planned hardware. The company says its first devices will arrive in 2027, though no hardware has yet been shown publicly.

Abidur Chowdhury, Hark’s head of design and a former Apple lead on the iPhone Air, has said the devices should be “portable, and useful in the home and workplace.” He has also ruled out some familiar AI hardware formats, saying, “we don’t really believe in glasses with cameras or a pin you can wear.”

AT&T is providing cellular connectivity for the future devices.

Hark raised $700 million at a $6 billion valuation earlier this year after emerging from stealth. Investors in the round included Nvidia, AMD Ventures, Intel Capital and Qualcomm Ventures. Founder Brett Adcock had previously invested $100 million of his own money and also runs Figure AI.

Hark is not the only AI company planning hardware for 2027. OpenAI is also expected to introduce a $300 speaker designed by Jony Ive’s studio.

The software side, however, is arriving first. Hark Pro gives the company a way to establish its agent before its hardware is available, while competing directly with products such as Meta’s Muse on browser-based tasks, account access and automated transactions.

Questions remain around how these agents will handle payments in Europe. Software-approved purchases do not have a specific exemption from strong customer authentication rules, and Hark has not said whether Hark Pro is available in Europe.

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This analysis is based on reporting from TNW.

Image courtesy of Hark.

This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.