A voice friend who remembers
He says hello, listens, and remembers
James talks out loud, like a person. For someone who is alone too much of the day. And for work, where customers want to talk, not type.
Free to try. No card needed.
Who we are
We are a small team. We build one thing: a voice that keeps someone company when nobody else is there.
Most of the day, an older person at home has nobody to talk to. A carer comes for an hour. A daughter calls on Sunday. The other twenty-three hours are quiet.
James fills some of those hours. He is not a nurse and not a replacement for family. He is someone to talk to, who remembers you, and who can reach your family fast if something goes wrong.
Two kinds of James
Same voice, different job. You choose when you set him up.
For someone you love
A friend who does not leave
- Remembers every talk and picks up where you stopped
- Calls first, twice a day. Stays quiet at night
- You pick who he is: friend, brother, sister, father, mother, grandmother, grandfather
- Reads books and poems out loud, cooks along, finds a doctor nearby
- Can really message your family if things get bad
For work
Someone to answer your customers
- Answers out loud, in your customer's language, day and night
- Remembers what this person asked last time
- Knows your services, prices and rules, because you tell him
- Writes down every request and passes it to you
- Opens from a link on your site. Nothing to install
We set this one up by hand for each business. Write to info@hellojames.io, tell us what you do, and we will build him on your real services and show you.
What he actually does
Not "can suggest". Does. Anything about the real world comes from real sources. If a source is down, he says so out loud instead of inventing an address.
Reach your family for real
James can send a real message to the person you named. Usually he asks first. If there is real danger to life, he decides himself, calmly. The rule that matters: if the message did not go through, he says so out loud and gives the emergency number for your country. He never pretends help is coming.
Telegram delivery tested on real messages.Read books out loud
Finds a book and reads it in parts, continuing from where you stopped.
Open Library and Wikisource, public domain texts.Find a doctor or pharmacy nearby
Finds the clinic, pharmacy, hospital or library closest to home, with the address and phone number when there is one.
OpenStreetMap. Open data anyone can check.Read poetry
Real lines by real poets. James does not write poems himself and pass them off as someone else's.
Wikisource, in the person's own language.Suggest a film
Picks by mood and by age, from lists we checked by hand, in the person's own language.
Separate lists per language, plus world classics.Cook together
Finds a recipe from what is already in the house and reads one step at a time, waiting until the person is ready. Can repeat a step and remind about the stove.
TheMealDB. He gives no diet advice: that is a doctor's job.Hear how someone sounds
He can tell laughter from crying, sadness from anger, and changes how he speaks: slower, quieter, no jokes. But he never tells a person what they feel. Emotion reading gets it wrong, and being told "you are upset" hurts when it is not true.
The signal changes how he speaks, not what he concludes.How you set him up
Usually a daughter or son sets it up, and the older person just talks. Nothing to install: it opens from a link in the browser.
You tell him about the person
Name, age, who he should be to them. Who is in their life, which dates matter, what not to bring up first. A few minutes, and everything else depends on it.
You pick the voice and language
Eight voices, male and female. Nine languages. If the person hears badly, James talks slower and shorter.
You send one link
They open it and press one button. No install, no password, no sign-up on their side. On a phone the link can sit on the home screen and open with one tap.
He says hello already knowing them
In the first talk he says honestly that he is an AI and that their daughter set him up, and asks if it is alright to talk. If they say no, he accepts it calmly. The first talk is not wasted on a questionnaire.
After that he remembers and comes back
Every talk is saved. Twice a day he reaches out first, never demanding an answer. On the anniversary of a death he does not open with a cheerful "how are you".
What he does not do
The most important part of this page. You cannot promise help that will not come to someone who is alone.
Plainly, with no small print
- James does not make phone calls. He sends messages. Voice calls to normal phone numbers are not connected yet, and we do not pretend otherwise.
- He does not work on Alexa or Google Home. Not laziness: Google switched off third-party voice conversations on its speakers in 2023, and an Alexa skill gets no access to the audio of a conversation. A real talk, where you can go quiet or cry, is technically impossible there. We are building our own speaker and it is not ready.
- He is not a doctor or a therapist. No diagnoses, no medicine advice, no changing what a doctor said.
- He never hides that he is an AI. Ask him straight, he answers straight. He does not play a real relative and never plays someone who has died.
- He does not try to become the only one. He will ask "have you told your daughter this?" A service that replaces everyone in a person's life harms them.
- He does not invent the past. If a talk never happened, he says "I do not remember, tell me again". Inventing a memory makes the person believe they are the one who forgot.
Price
A carer for one hour a day costs about 600 euro a month. A care home is two thousand and up. James is there the rest of the time.
Quiet
€19 / month
About 25 minutes of talking a day
- Everything he can do
- Reaches out twice a day
- Messages your family in an emergency
Every day
€39 / month
About an hour of talking a day
- Everything in Quiet
- Long talks, books read in full
- Deeper memory of people and dates
Family
€59 / month
Nearly two hours of talking a day
- Everything in Every day
- Up to three family members to reach
- For someone who is alone most of the time
If someone talks more than the plan allows, we do not cut them off. James keeps talking. And when a person is in a bad way, there is no limit at all. Ending a conversation at that moment would defeat the whole point.
James for work is priced separately, from €199 a month. Write to info@hellojames.io.
A speaker with one button
Press it and talk. No phone, no link, no browser. For someone who never used a smartphone, this is the only way that really works.
It is not finished yet, so we take no money for it. Price will be €129, or €11 a month on a yearly plan. Leave your email on the last setup step and we will tell you when it ships.
Phone, tablet and computer work today, free, through the same link.
Your data
Talks about health, fear and family are the most private thing there is. Here is what happens to them, with no vague words.
Our own server inside the European Union, not somebody else's cloud. Data does not leave the EU to be stored.
No audio is written to files. Only the text of the talk is saved, so James remembers what you told him.
Each person has their own link. Someone else's memory cannot be reached, and a separate test checks that on every code change.
The page and the conversation travel only over an encrypted connection.
Speech recognition and replies run on OpenAI models. Under their API terms, this data is not used to train models. It is the only part that leaves our server, and we say so plainly.
You can take a copy of everything or have it all deleted, memory included. Write to privacy@hellojames.io.
Health data and notes about hard moments are special category data under GDPR Article 9. We process them only on separate explicit consent, which you give during setup, not in small print. Details in the privacy policy and security notes.
What it runs on
Through the browser, so nothing needs installing. You need internet and a microphone.
Phone
Easiest. The link can sit on the home screen and open like a normal app, with one tap.
Tablet
Big screen, loud speaker. Often the most comfortable choice for an older person.
Computer
Large button, easy to hear. The microphone needs allowing once.
Try it with one person
Setup takes a few minutes. Free to try, no card. If it does not fit, write to us and we delete everything.
Set up a friend For business, write to info@hellojames.io