Hark, an AI startup founded less than a year ago by serial founder Brett Adcock, released its Hark Pro personal assistant to the public on October 6. The service is free to use, with a paid subscription tier for heavy users.
The company says its mission is to build a user interface for AI. It is not trying to create artificial general intelligence or cure diseases.
Hark Pro runs on a model trained specifically for computer use. In simple terms, the assistant uses a computer on the user's behalf.
How Hark Pro Works
Hark Pro is a full-screen experience with a homepage. It features a central chat window and a feed of suggested actions.
The feed also includes "panels," which the company describes as mini-dashboards for topics a user cares about. The background image changes based on the local weather and time of day.
Users connect the assistant to their email, calendar, hard drive, credit cards and other accounts. It can then complete digital tasks and answer standard chatbot questions.
Abidur Chowdhury, a former Apple designer who leads design at Hark, demonstrated the product. The assistant asked him about expenses to approve, emails to answer and a flight he needed to book.
Chowdhury said the assistant recently noticed a colleague needed to renew a car registration with the California DMV. It then completed the renewal through the agency's website.
Hark Pro also shows users a small window of the agent moving through the web. Chowdhury said this is meant to build trust by letting users see the agent is doing the right thing.
Privacy Pitch and Competition
Hark is positioning itself as an alternative to larger tech companies such as Meta and OpenAI. "We're not here to like sell you ads and steal your data," Chowdhury said.
Asked about user profiling, Chowdhury said Hark works to understand users but keeps that focus on tasks. He said the goal is to take things off people's plates.
Hark faces competition from other AI assistants, including Muse, Instinct and Dots. Chowdhury invited critical comparisons with rival products.
"It might not be faster than Muse, but it will give you a better result," he said. He added that Hark Pro works end-to-end rather than asking users to take over partway through.
Because Hark's model is built for computer use, it is faster and cheaper at those tasks. It remains unclear how much broader knowledge it gives up compared with large frontier AI models.
Chowdhury also commented on how people still type to chatbots using keyboards. "Fifty years later and the future of computing is still a terminal," he said.
Hark plans to release an AI-native hardware device in 2027 to support its software. The company has not shared what form the device will take.
Chowdhury said he dislikes the "creep factor" of wearable cameras. He described Hark's first device as "a product that's never ever existed before."
