Bluesky’s AI assistant Attie expands into an open social research tool

Attie , Bluesky’s AI assistant that lets you build custom social feeds without programming, is evolving into an open-ended research tool.

The company this week said it’s added a new feature to the AI assistant, called Quests, that lets users ask it for information and news spreading across the broader Bluesky social network, nicknamed the Atmosphere. This includes not only Bluesky, but also any app that integrates with the underlying AT Protocol.

Bluesky’s user growth has slowed over the past eight months — the social network saw its user base double to 40 million last October, within just a year, but it now reports around 45.6 million registered accounts . So the company has been looking to develop tools and services that could allow it to grow its user base and potentially monetize it.

Attie, launched in March , is a separate product by Bluesky that lets users design their own algorithm, create custom feeds, and, one day possibly, vibe-code their own apps. While the AI assistant is free for the time being, the company has toyed with the idea of charging for the service.

Quests adds new capabilities to Attie, allowing users to ask it open-ended questions to research what’s happening on this part of the open social web. For instance, you could ask Attie to pull information about trending topics, or help you identify the most influential accounts in a particular field or location, the company explained.

“Attie’s AI is a tool that helps you make sense of the internet, helping you fight back against the proliferation of misinformation and noise by giving you the tools to find the truth yourself,” wrote Bluesky’s chief innovation officer Jay Graber, who stepped down in March from her role as CEO of the company . (She’s since been replaced by Toni Schneider, the former founding CEO of Automattic.)

“Our bet is that tools that help people make sense of the world will prove to be more useful than those that fill it with confusion,” Graber wrote. “We want Attie to reduce the barrier to entry and expertise required to learn how to use the AT Protocol, and to put the tools for customizing your experience in the hands of anyone who wants them.”

Graber noted Attie is being redesigned to add accessibility features and a new logo, and more changes are coming in the months ahead.

For now, the new Attie experience is in beta, and users will be invited in from a waitlist over the coming weeks.

While many Bluesky users tend to dislike AI for economic, political, and environmental reasons, the company has had to balance its community’s leanings with the need to generate revenue to help itself and the AT Protocol development it leads remain afloat.