Personal AI assistants have become a thing ever since OpenClaw came out. AI that you could do more than just ask questions or generate emails, AI that can accomplish tasks. I have a task that I long to automate - filling out job applications. I'm currently between jobs and have so many emails filling my box with jobs I need to vet and then apply to those that meet my desires. It an can take 1 to 2 hours a day. Boring hours. Frustrating hours.
I never got far with OpenClaw or Hermes - others have, but just too much setup for me.
Grokbot came on like gangbusters as a personal assistant AI that could do real work and giving you a computer in the cloud where the work happens. Unlike OpenClaw, Hermes and the like - there is nothing to install. I was late to trying it because I don't subscribe to Grok and I've tried several times when new models came out to use it for software development and Grok has never held up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
OpenAI came out with Dot, their Grokbot competitor. I like it but it really wasn't up to the task of filling out applications for me. Then xAI put out a sale and I signed up for the $100/mo plan for $50 and I got to try Grokbot.
Both AI assistants, Grokbot and Dot are great at reading your emails. I have both a outlook email and a gmail account and setup was easy for both. Grokbot, I named mine Elon, had the same initial hassle for the first couple of applications, but once I gave my answers to the questions, Elon was far faster at getting to automation. He has applied to 38 jobs so far and I have had 2 interviews come from those applications. One of which is quite promising. Fingers crossed.
I'd wager OpenAI will improve Dot enough in a short amount of time that I'll drop my Grok subscription until they come up with truly competitive AI coding models. But for now, I see what people like grokbot. "Elon" has at least a month to do work for me.
BTW, one of the nice things is having them archive the emails after. I have Dot reading my AI related newsletters, creating a daily news for me from them, and archiving them. That's a good 20 to 40 emails a day that these two bots handle and archive for me.
Dot also pointed out a subscription I was paying for and not using. I had Dot go through and list all my emails and identify which are subscriptions. I identified the ones I wanted to keep and Dot unsubscribed me from all the rest. Very handy. I'm not at Email Zero but it's much nicer than before.
I've been building my own AI Employee Factory platform and these personal assistant bot's won't replace that need. But having your own AI Employee in the form of GrokBot or Dot is very nice.
