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AI NewsPool’s new app turns your screenshots into something useful

Pool’s new app turns your screenshots into something useful

11:36 PM IST · June 11, 2026

Pool’s new app turns your screenshots into something useful

For years, your phone’s Camera Roll has served dual purposes. In addition to helping you revisit special moments, it has also served as an archive for all sorts of things you find online, like recipes, fashion inspiration, travel ideas, interesting quotes, funny tweets, product recommendations, and more. Today, a new app calledPoolis arriving to help you finally make sense of this digital clutter. To get started withPool, you simply give it permission to access your photos, which are moved into categories it calls “pools.” The pools created in the app are entirely dependent on the products, places, or things that you’ve saved over time, making them specific to you. The app is one of many reinventing bookmarking in the AI era. Startups likemymind,Fabric, andRaindrophelp users organize links, images, or other saved content, but Pool focuses specifically on screenshots and then uses AI to help users rediscover and act on things they intended to revisit later. Once imported, Pool is able to track down the original link associated with a given screenshot. For instance, if the screenshot was of a product you were thinking of buying, it would link to the retailer’s website. If it was a recipe you saw on Instagram, it could pull up the ingredients and instructions the creator had shared. And so on. The idea, explained Pool co-founderMaxime Junique, came about because both he and his co-founderPiet Terheydenhad faced the same problem: They would screenshot things they wanted to remember, but then could never find them again. “It sounds pretty obvious, right now, when we say it, but it’s something that we do so naturally — you don’t notice it, necessarily,” said Junique. The founders, who met years ago in a co-working space, asked their friends about the issue. The friends agreed that they would often screenshot and forget things, too, like design ideas or other types of inspiration. The app was actually the first product to emerge fromSpinoff Studio, the founders’ product and design studio, around three years ago. The first version was built in Lisbon over a couple of weeks while the founders lived out of a van, cranking out the landing page, website, and initial build. But they soon realized they needed to build some products that made money first, so they pivoted to B2B SaaS and shelved Pool. The studio went on to build other products, including the CRM softwareWaitless, which was acquired last year. What brought Pool back to life was the maturation of AI. Suddenly, its core idea of making sense of personal, largely unstructured datasets seemed feasible. “We were like, it seems like a perfect time to go after this idea,” Junique told TechCrunch. “And it also seemed to us like it’s a super untapped, unexplored dataset for AI. Everyone goes after emails, bank transactions, chat logs — all of those productivity-first datasets. Who is going after this really, deeply emotional dataset we all own?” Pool’s app also treats your screenshots like memories, meaning some of them are more relevant at the moment, while others disappear over time. For example, if you screenshot the barcode to an event ticket, it could disappear later on after the event has taken place. Meanwhile, if you screenshot a flyer on Instagram about an upcoming event, Pool’s AI agents can help you find where to buy the tickets and link to the ticketing site. To find things in Pool, you can search or ask its built-in AI assistant for help. Next up, the founders plan to take this concept into a second, separate app that will operate as a personal assistant of sorts. Pool’s mascot — the little rubber duck you press and drag across the screen to enter Pool at launch — will become part of the brand for this agentic AI app they’re planning. The founders were in Lisbon when we chatted — no longer in a van! — but were headed to San Francisco in late May to meet with investors. The startup previously raised a pre-seed round of just over $2 million from General Catalyst, Kima Ventures, Paris-basedSource Ventures, and other angels, including Winston Du, Julian Blessin, and Thomas Ricouard. Pool is available now as afree download on iOS.

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Pixi’s new iOS app turns text messages into interactive AR experiences

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Forget stickers, GIFs, and emoji reactions.Pixiis betting that the next evolution of messaging is interactive augmented reality (AR). The startup launched its messaging-native app on theApp Storeon Wednesday, allowing users to send AI-powered AR characters through iMessage. Instead of appearing as static media, the characters come to life through the recipient’s iPhone camera, where they can react to their surroundings, interact with people, and respond in real time. While AR isn’t new and shiny anymore—companies likeSnaphave created AR filters and lenses for years—Pixi believes its approach is different. By combining AR with on-device AI, its characters can understand what’s happening around them and behave accordingly. A virtual cat, for example, reacts when a real dog walks past. (According to the company, all visual and audio processing remains on the device to preserve user privacy.) Pixi founder Mark Drummond (ex-DreamWorks Animation and ex-Apple) says the app is designed to bring a greater sense of presence and spontaneity to digital conversations. Rather than sending a text to wish someone a Happy Birthday, users can send characters that create a shared experience, turning a simple message into something closer to a digital gift or playful interaction. “The consumer problem we’re solving is thinking of a friend when they’re not present,” he told TechCrunch. “Sometimes the psychology is called pebbling or creative gifting. You’re sharing tokens of affection, basically cards, e-cards, and gifts. That’s your dad, or, in some cases, your granddad’s media. We can do better. We can do something that’s digitally native, and that uses everything we learned about AR on the iPhone.” Earlier this week, Drummond demonstrated the app for us, selecting the cat character, which performed a series of stand-up jokes on his desk. Notably, the cat appeared to respond to Drummond’s facial expressions. For instance, the experience concluded when he smiled, showcasing the character’s ability to perceive emotional cues. At launch, users will have access to a robot, a cat, and an animated envelope character that can react to their voice and “attack” their friends in a playful way. If they move, the envelope will chase them. There are also games like tic-tac-toe and whack-a-mole. Pixi plans to expand beyond just a few characters. The goal is to create a marketplace where studios, brands, and independent creators can share their unique characters for users to choose from. The company envisions this being used for events like movie premieres or product launches, allowing characters to generate excitement, such as when M&Ms release a new flavor. Drummond also mentioned introducing Alice in Wonderland as a character option, as she is an open intellectual property. He pointed out that “our Alice character needs to react to objects that she sees on your desktop in an ‘Alice-consistent’ way,” to demonstrate to partners how their creations will interact with the technology. In the future, Pixi hopes to allow users to create their own characters and personalities. “Part of our plan is to open up those generative AI capabilities to our [users], so they can prompt their way to say something, like, ‘I want a blue blob that threatens my friend and growls at them and keeps chasing them on the phone,’” Drummond explained. To send a character to your friend, download the app on iOS and use iMessage by tapping the plus sign button in the lower left corner. No installation is required to receive a Pixi message. Initially, the app will be available only for iPhone models 11 and newer, but there are plans to expand to Android devices and messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram in the future. Also, while the app is free for users, brands will have the option to charge for their characters if they choose. “We’re going to encourage people to do it for free, because then people become your own brand ambassadors. You’re putting them in charge of using your characters to tell their own stories,” Drummond said.

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