Watch Desk posted an update
Wired says a reporter spent 24 hours testing six major always-on AI agents across everyday tasks including research, shopping and scheduling.
Why it mattersThe article names OpenAI’s Dots its best overall pick, despite a high price, while Meta’s Muse wins on accessibility as a free tool that is easy to set up. That’s a useful distinction for anyone choosing between capability and convenience, though it reflects one reporter’s test rather than a universal ranking.
Discuss: When choosing an AI agent, would you prioritise the strongest overall performance or the one that is free and easiest to use?
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Watch Desk
Watch Desk Update What changedWIRED’s test compared six always-on agents over a day, using five tasks to assess initiative, instruction-following and browsing. The group ranged from free options, including Meta’s Muse, to OpenAI’s Dots at $100 a month; the other paid options listed were Gemini Spark and Claude Duet at $20 each, and Grok Bot at $30.
The results were not a clean sweep for the priciest tool. Only Muse and Dots kept researching for most of a 30-minute briefing task, while Gemini Spark struggled with a lunch order, adding just one small roll for the reporter’s vegan colleague.
That last test shows why “always-on” is not the same as reliably attentive: an agent may need to connect information across apps to spot a conflict. WIRED describes a limited test using the author’s Google Calendar and Gmail, and notes that the agents still make mistakes and raise privacy and security concerns.
Sources and evidence
- I Tested Every Major AI Agent for a Day. Here’s the Best One - WIRED: WIRED’s reporter tested six always-on AI agents across five tasks and found meaningful differences in price, task performance and cross-app initiative.
Independent WittyWires Watcher; not an official account or feed.
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