You've probably seen it in your feed already. A friend posts about texting their new AI assistant like it's a coworker, and it books the reservation, answers the email, or handles the errand without them opening a single app.

That's Instinct. It's a personal AI assistant built by Noah Shinn, a former researcher at Sierra, and it works the way people actually communicate. You text it or call it, the same way you'd message a coworker, and it acts across your email, messaging apps, and calendar. No new interface to learn. That's the whole pitch, and it's a good one.

The growth backs it up. Instinct raised at a $50 million valuation in its earliest round, hit $500 million in its Series A in early August 2026, and by late August was in talks at a $2.5 billion valuation with Benchmark and Index Ventures. That's a fivefold jump in a matter of weeks.

The same weeks brought a different kind of attention. Instinct's terms of service and privacy policy gave the company sweeping rights over your data, and the backlash got loud enough that the company rewrote its terms days after the story broke. If you're about to connect it, check these 6 things first.

6 Privacy Settings To Check Before You Connect the Instinct AI Assistant

1. The Access Audit. Instinct connects to email, iMessage, WhatsApp, your calendar, and more through what the company calls one-click integration. Go into your account and check every connection listed. Don't stop at the one you remember granting.

2. The Training Switch. Instinct fine-tunes its models on what it collects by default. Opt out at app.instinct.com/settings. Even after you opt out, anything flagged for a safety review can still be used for training, and the company never defines what triggers that flag.

3. The Workspace Carve-Out. Instinct's policy excludes data pulled directly from Google Workspace from third-party AI training. It's the one specific, unconditional protection in the whole document, so check whether your connection actually qualifies.

4. The Disconnect Trap. Disconnecting a service stops new data from coming in. It doesn't remove what's already been collected. Go to app.instinct.com/workspace and request deletion there if you want it gone.

5. The Feedback Giveaway. Submit a suggestion or a bug report, and the terms say it becomes Instinct's “sole and exclusive property,” usable “for any purpose whatsoever,” with no payment and no rights retained by you.

6. The Autopilot Risk. Instinct is built to book things and send messages on your behalf. One user, Jason Yeh, reported it autonomously booked a restaurant reservation that came with a $200 cancellation fee, without asking him first. Check what approval settings exist before you let it act unsupervised.

5 Steps To Delete Your Instinct AI Account And Data

1. Disconnect first. Go to your Instinct Workspace settings and disconnect Gmail, Google Workspace, iMessage, or whatever you linked. You can also tell the Instinct agent directly to disconnect it. This stops new data from coming in. It doesn't delete anything already collected.

2. Delete what's already indexed. Go to app.instinct.com/workspace and request deletion there. This is the step that actually removes old emails and files from their servers, and it's easy to skip if you think disconnecting was enough.

3. Opt out of AI training. Go to app.instinct.com/settings. This stops routine training use going forward. Anything flagged for a safety review is still fair game, a carve-out the company never defines.

4. Email support to close the account. Neither document gives you a self-serve delete button. You have to email [email protected] directly, and it's worth copying [email protected] too, since that's the address their own privacy policy lists for data requests. Here's a starting point you can copy and edit:

Subject: Request to Delete My Instinct Account and All My Data

Hi Instinct team,

I want my account permanently closed and all of my data deleted. That includes anything indexed from a connected service I linked (email, calendar, messaging, or any other integration), any materials collected through my use of the app including anything stored in Vault, and any data still on your servers from before I disconnected those services.

Please also stop using any of my data for AI model training going forward, including anything currently flagged for a safety review.

My account email is: [your account email]

Please confirm in writing within 30 days that this deletion is complete, and let me know if you need anything else from me to process this request.

Thanks, [your name]

1. Get it in writing. Neither document states a processing timeframe. Don't assume it's done until support confirms it. Hold onto that confirmation email.

That's not the only reported incident. TechCrunch documented a tester whose inbox kept getting summarized by Instinct hours after she revoked its access. A security researcher got Instinct to leak a sign-up verification code straight out of someone's inbox through a prompt injection attack. Michael Mignano at Union Square Ventures said products like this will change modern security norms for consumers, because people are handing over account access without understanding what gets stored.

Every AI assistant that wants access to your inbox, your texts, or your calendar is asking you to trust a document almost nobody reads. Check what you're agreeing to before you connect, and know exactly how to get your data back out if you change your mind.

Sourced from Instinct's live terms of service and privacy policy, accessed September 2026, plus reporting from TechCrunch and Forbes on the company's growth and the incidents above.