Voice your curiosity
Raven Jiang, Head of Product Engineering
A year ago, we took a first step towards a future powered by natural conversations when we released our Research Preview, and we were blown away by your enthusiastic response.
I am excited to share an update on our next milestone: an iOS preview of our lifelike conversation partners, available now in the App Store.
Conversational intelligence
At Sesame, we’re creating a new way to interact with computers — one built on conversation, agentic capabilities, and intelligent eyewear.
Talking to agents should be so intuitive, you can do it anywhere. Instead of agonizing over the perfect prompt, just speak your mind and let the natural flow of the conversation take you where you want to go. That’s how conversation works between people, and that’s how we think it should work with agents.
A great conversation isn’t just question and answer — it’s timing and rhythm. Conversational agents need to respond quickly at the right moments. As part of this preview, we optimized their stack to shave off every millisecond of latency, and we trained them to have a better feel for the conversation flow. These improvements lead to better conversational intelligence.
There’s an inherent tension between replying quickly and taking the time to compose thoughtful responses. A slower response is usually more correct, but it can also feel unnatural if it takes too long. We took this fundamental challenge to heart when we set out to build fast search and retrieval systems to equip our agents with the most up-to-date information, so you can have natural conversations about real topics that matter to you.
Sesame agents can run multiple parallel searches while speaking and seamlessly weave relevant results into their response as they stream in, pivoting mid-sentence if necessary. This matches how humans continue to think as we speak, allowing our agents to carefully balance latency and accuracy. As a result, they can tap into slower and smarter agentic loops without awkward interruptions.
Your partner in curiosity
For the iOS experience, the first thing we chose to build on this technical foundation is what we internally refer to as the “curiosity engine” — agents that help you learn, discover, and reflect.
We learned a lot from you, our early users, during our Research Preview. Not just about how you want to use Sesame, but where. Sesame shines in the in-between moments of daily life, where the best thinking happens when you don’t expect it. Whether you are commuting to work or taking an evening stroll around the park, we want our agents to be ready for you with insightful conversations and timely information.
To achieve this, we built features that make the real-time conversation experience more useful:
- Search cards with image results that help you visualize new concepts quickly
- Notes to capture takeaways for later
- Texting for when it’s easier not to speak out loud
- Deep dives for in-depth results
The common thread that runs through these features is that we made every one of them voice-first. The information and visuals that are presented on your phone enrich the agents’ responses and give you greater confidence in their substance, but if you choose to go display-free, the details will always be available through the app later.
Naturally personalized
Alongside this release, two new characters — Simone and Charlie — join Maya and Miles. We crafted them intentionally, imbuing each with a distinct voice, personality, and point of view. Choosing the right agent for the moment is a big part of personalizing your experience.
Charlie
Simone
Memory is essential to interacting with agents, and it’s a big part of what makes Sesame special. Each agent has its own memory, so what you discuss with Miles stays with Miles. It’s consistent across voice and text, so each character feels like the same person whether you speak or type. Memory makes interacting with Sesame agents more useful over time.
For conversations you want to keep private, we’ve also introduced Incognito mode. In this mode, agents have access to prior context, but nothing new is saved or committed to memory, and the conversation is completely ephemeral.
Download the preview
As of today, the iOS preview is available on the App Store in 39 countries. During this initial phase of the rollout, the full experience is free, but you may experience a short waitlist after signing up.
We’re letting in users as quickly as we can while maintaining a high-quality experience. An Android preview is also on its way.
What’s next
We’re on a mission to bring out more curiosity and creativity in us all. Today, our agents can think with you; soon, we'll share more on what they can do for you. This iOS preview is an important step on the road to intelligent eyewear (coming 2027) and more.