folk vs Poke: which AI assistant to text
The axis is what happens to what you tell it. Poke is the only agent Apple approved and its policy says it trains on your data unless you turn that off; folk built an isolated cloud computer per user and says it never trains at all.
folk is for
Anyone who wants the architecture to make the privacy promise rather than the policy.
Poke is for
Anyone who wants the officially sanctioned route into Messages and will manage the setting.
A personal AI with an isolated cloud computer and a persistent memory graph
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The first independent third-party agent approved on Apple Messages for Business
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folk and Poke, side by side
They differ on getting in, trust and who runs it; a dot marks each row where they do.
| folk | Poke | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting in | ||
| Where do you text it? | iMessage, Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Voice. | iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram. |
| How do you start? | Tap one link. | Create an account. |
| Does it work on Android? | Yes, over Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord. | Yes, over WhatsApp, Telegram. |
| Is there an app to install? | No app: nothing to install at any point. | Optional app: an app exists but is not how you start. |
| Who starts the conversation? | On a schedule. | Messages you first. |
| Price | ||
| What does it cost? | Free to start, with paid tiers. | Free to start, with paid tiers. |
| Trust | ||
| Does it train on my messages? | States it does not. | Yes, with opt-out. |
| What does it hold to log in for me? | Holds what it does not say; a security contact is published. | Holds what it does not say; no security contact published. |
| What happens to my messages? | Carried by Linq. | Carried by Linq. |
| Does it publish about its security? | Nothing published. | Nothing published. |
| Can it phone people? | Yes; the agent speaks. | It does not call. |
| Who runs it | ||
| Who is behind it? | Nozomio, Inc.; funded. | The Interaction Company of California, acquired by Cognition, Palo Alto; funded. |
| How is it funded? | Not published. Nozomio Labs announces no round on its own pages. | $25M total: a $15M seed led by General Catalyst at a reported $100M valuation on launch day, then $10M in April 2026 co-led by Spark Capital and General Catalyst at a $300M post-money valuation. Acquired by Cognition in July 2026 for an undisclosed sum. |
| What it can do, on its own pages | ||
| Bookings and reservations | Yes | Not stated |
| Persistent memory | Yes | Not stated |
| Writing code | Yes | Not stated |
| Phone calls | Yes | Not stated |
| Calendar and scheduling | Not stated | Yes |
| Reminders | Not stated | Yes |
| Both | Email, Web research, Task management, Travel. | |
What separates folk and Poke
Poke's significance is regulatory. It was the first independent third-party AI agent approved on Apple Messages for Business, a programme that is otherwise invite-only and closed to new partners, and it reached over 100 million messages before Cognition acquired it in July 2026. Everything else in this directory reaches iMessage some other way.
folk's significance is architectural. Every user gets an isolated cloud computer of their own plus a persistent memory graph, and it runs across iMessage, Telegram, WhatsApp and Discord.
Their published policies point in opposite directions, and this is the thing to weigh. Poke's says data is used to "train our artificial intelligence models" and that "data from users who select Maximum Privacy will not be used for model training", making training a setting that is on by default. folk's says "we never use your data to train AI models", with a separate commitment that Google Workspace data is not used to train or fine-tune any model. Both start free, and Poke is the more expensive at the top: $199 a month for its Ultra tier against folk's $100 for Max.
The same products, against others
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