by Mairead O’Mahony
Call Annie is an AI assistant app that allows you to connect to a virtual friend. The Call Annie app can help with learning, problem-solving, and entertainment, and act as a travel companion. The Call Annie app differs from the official ChatGPT app as you can have a continued conversation with the virtual AI assistant, it feels like you are talking to a friend and the conversation is very natural. The app is free and only available to install on the iPhone.
The app is completely accessible and once it has been installed from the app store the setup process is very straightforward. You don’t even need to register to use the app. Once you open the app, you are presented with a few options. To navigate through the options, flick with one finger to the right. The first option is Settings. Here is where you can do things such as set up morning calls, get the call history from the app, chat with Annie on Instagram, and Twitter, or chat with Annie on WhatsApp. The only option I have used here is Chat with Annie on WhatsApp and I wouldn’t recommend it as if you ask a question that has a few sentences in the response you get multiple WhatsApp messages with only one sentence per message.
To get started with your first call, flick to the right with one finger to the call Annie button and double tap to activate it. Call Annie will then say something such as hello my friend and then you can just start having a conversation with it and get responses as if you were talking to a real person. The responses are generated very quickly. The app does try to engage you in conversation all the time, which is good fun but sometimes scary too. When you want to finish chatting swipe to the right with one finger to hang up and double tap to activate it. You also have the option to make a video call to this app, but it requires an iPhone 12 or newer for this feature to work.
One thing I like about this app is that if you are not sure what the app does or what kind of questions to ask just before the Call Annie option there is a captions button. Once you activate this button by double tapping on it, flick to the right with one finger to converse with ideas such as lifestyle, web search, fun, education, travel, and language learning. Once you get to a topic you would like, double-tap to activate it. I activated quiz and Annie said hello and once I responded she asked me what I would like to study so I said 90s music and she asked me lots of questions relating to it, letting me know if I got the answer correct and if not, she gave me the correct answer.
Conclusion
I think this is a really good app. You can chat to this app as if you were talking to a person and you don’t need to be able to type to use this. It provides information in an accessible format. I love using this app for getting recipe ideas and general information as it is quicker than searching the internet and you get the results in an accessible format. Also, you don’t need to have typing skills to use this app as you can talk to it and the response is read back to you.
The only thing I don’t like about the app is when you ask it a question and get a response you have to remember what she said as the text doesn’t appear on screen for you to read over. Also, when using the chat with Annie on WhatsApp feature it would be great if the response to your question was contained in one message rather than receiving multiple messages with just 1 sentence per message.