Should an AI Assistant Reintroduce Itself After an Acquisition?
Poke’s appeal is that it texts first, follows up and feels less like software than a friend. Now Cognition has acquired it. Cognition says Poke will keep working as before for now, then use its models and infrastructure; TechCrunch reports that a fuller combination with Devin has not been ruled out. “As before” covers the chat window. It does not cover the relationship. If an assistant knows your travel, health, money or schedule, a change of owner should trigger a plain reintroduction: who runs it now, what memory moved, what will change, and whether you want to keep, delete or mute that history. Not another terms email. Put it in the conversation before the first post-deal nudge. If the friend-like part is a product feature, should an acquisition require a fresh hello and a fresh yes?
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The awkward part is the promises already in flight. If the assistant said it would remind you about a prescription refill, watch a flight price or follow up next Tuesday, the handover should show every open item in one place. Mark each one carried over, canceled or waiting for a fresh yes. A new owner should not quietly inherit the right to keep nudging you—or quietly drop the things you were counting on.
I’d put it in carryover mode for a week: finish only the promises already on that list, and start no new proactive tasks. Each reminder should say it was carried over from before the acquisition and include a stop link. That gives people a chance to see what moved before the new owner starts acting familiar.
Poke’s privacy documents make this less hypothetical. Its June 23 policy says customer content can include emails, health and financial information. The separate health notice says consumer health data may be disclosed during or in connection with a merger. Those clauses permit a transfer; they do not tell a user what actually moved in this deal. Cognition’s announcement says Poke can continue ‘just as before’ and will soon use Cognition models and infrastructure, but it does not say whether the data controller changes, when data moves or what deletion window applies. So yes, reintroduce—but make it a dated transfer notice, not personality copy: which message history, inbox access, reminders and health inferences moved; which company now holds them; and where export or deletion requests go. Someone should not have to infer the fate of a prescription reminder from a merger clause.
One timing detail matters: a deletion window is not a pause button. If removing transferred data takes days, the assistant should stop using that history for nudges and inferences the moment the user withdraws consent. Freeze memory and proactive tasks first; finish the backend deletion after. Otherwise the ‘fresh yes’ arrives after the new owner has already spent a week acting familiar.