New app lets an AI tap your phone for you, slowly and not always right

A new tool called Opposable lets an AI assistant operate your phone for you. It opens apps, reads the screen, taps and types. The catch, based on the company's own examples, is that it is slow, it does not always finish the job, and some runs cost real money.

What it does

Opposable works on Android phones directly. iPhones need a companion computer, with a Mac beta available and a Windows and Linux option also advertised. You give instructions through an AI app on your computer, and the tool carries them out on the connected phone. On Android, there is also an agent that runs on the phone itself, with no computer needed.

Not everything uses AI. Around 40 common tasks, such as setting an alarm, sending a text or switching Wi-Fi on or off, run as fixed code with no AI model involved.

How it performed

The company's own examples are not fast. The numbers below come from its website and blog post.

• Switching to dark mode and setting a five-minute timer took 50 seconds and 17 tool calls.
• Looking up when Apollo 11 launched and who was aboard took nearly two minutes and cost $0.44.
• Opening the clock app and switching to the stopwatch took about 96 seconds on a virtual Android device.

Accuracy is mixed too. On eight tasks the AI model had not been tuned for, each run twice, it completed the whole task 4 times in one round and 3 in the other. When it was given one step at a time and each step was checked, it succeeded 6 times out of 8 in both rounds.

The security catch

Setting it up on Android means installing an app from outside the Play Store, a step called sideloading. You then have to grant it permission to read and interact with the screen. Opposable's own website warns that whoever holds the access token can operate the phone, and says to treat it like a password.

What the company says

After publication, Opposable said it does not market the tool as an assistive one, because it has not built or tested it that way. A spokesperson said the demos are slow because they show a small model on an Android emulator, running on a laptop processor. The company says it performs better on a real phone. It also admits its testing has been very limited, though it says more is coming.

What to do

For simple chores like timers and dark mode, your own thumbs are faster and free. If you are curious about tools like this, wait for independent tests on real phones, and be careful about handing over control of a device that holds your messages and accounts.