AT&T’s New App Bundles Mobile and Home Internet Along With an AI Assistant

AT&T is launching a new app on Wednesday, replacing the MyAT&T app previously used to manage account options for mobile and broadband customers. It features a new AI-powered chat assistant, parental controls, and more details on call and data usage.

Typically, an app release isn’t newsworthy on its own. But carrier apps are becoming the central way people interact with their wireless and home Internet services, from checking and paying their bills to troubleshooting connection issues. Verizon has tapped Google Gemini for front-line support in its app, and T-Mobile uses its T-Life app to stay on top of weekly benefits and even encourages potential customers to switch carriers.

AT&T’s new app — called simply, if confusingly, AT&T — brings together its mobile and home Internet features for what the company calls “converged” customers who subscribe to both. It also has a sleeker design and looks faster overall.

I tried a beta version of the app before launch, and one of the first things I noticed about the MyAT&T app was the removal of a long-standing annoyance. Sometimes when you search for information, the application displays it in a web browser within the interface. I’m being shown the right content, but it feels as if I had been transferred to something else, which is disjointed.

“Our data shows that if there is friction [customers’] “The experiences, people just give up,” said Andrew Solmssen, assistant vice president of digital customer growth at AT&T. “So we worked really hard on” the design and performance.

AI-powered converged assistant

The new AT&T app includes the buttons and menus you’d expect to navigate to view your bill, explore other plans and services, and purchase phones and accessories. But Solmssen said development teams recognized that these frameworks don’t work for everyone, which is why a major new feature is a generative AI assistant named Andi.

“We found in our testing that people find [these tasks] be a little easier to do directly through a conversation,” Solmssen said.

This also allows customers to switch contexts without having to start over or navigate to a new section. If they’re checking to see if an international day pass is available, for example, and then want to know day pass prices, just ask a follow-up question in the same chat, he said.

“The goal here is to serve the customer in the best way they want to be served,” said Jeff Dixon, AT&T’s assistant vice president of digital product management and development.

The functionality is built using licensed LLM components such as Google’s Gemini models and OpenAI. Customer data remains with AT&T and is not shared with outside companies. “Our data is all sequestered,” Dixon said. “There is a vast red team… [and] a lot of rigorous work just to make sure everything is safe. »

In my limited testing with the beta app, getting information from the AI ​​assistant was hit or miss. When I asked Andi how long it had been since I used my Apple Watch data, he showed me the prices for buying a new watch. And when I asked him to recommend a plan for my account, he suggested the AT&T Unlimited Premium PL, which was removed last week in favor of the new Premium 2.0 plan.

I then asked him to compare Premium 2.0 with my current plan, but he couldn’t access it. So, in this interaction at least, it’s not about bringing customer information into the conversation. But when I asked him to compare the Unlimited Elite plan with the Premium 2.0 plan, he gave me bulleted lists of features and a numbered summary of their differences.

I thought maybe my expectations were too high, but I realized that wasn’t really the case: Chatbots like this are meant to be conversational to give you an experience that feels more like a conversation with a real person. If I walked into an AT&T store and spoke with one of the employees, they could look up my account and answer questions with that information at their fingertips.

“It’s still early enough that we need to see how customers use it and how they like it,” Solmssen said, adding that that still includes the option of going to a store to work with an AT&T representative or contacting phone support.

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Parental controls, detailed data and improved messages

Another new feature in the app lets you pause devices or sets of devices connected to your accounts. In the example Solmssen gives, if parents want to ensure they spend some time away from their phones during dinner or a family activity, they can pause each device for 30 minutes, 2 hours, or 24 hours. This can be done on an individual level or in a group including each child’s phone. While taking a phone break for a family dinner is an innocuous scenario, other scenarios, including parental controls that temporarily turn off children’s phones wherever they are, could be overbearing.

If the family is a converged customer with both mobile and home Internet access on the same account, they can also suspend Wi-Fi access to devices using the same functionality.

Groups can also be set up with downtime, such as being offline during times when kids (or even parents) should be sleeping.

A few other features stand out. The app shows more detailed usage statistics, such as data used by each device in the account, calls, texts, and hotspot data.

“Even customers who use unlimited wireless and Internet access are really curious about the data they’re using,” Solmssen said. “Being able to see that your child’s devices were using a ton of data at 4 a.m. is extremely valuable.”

AT&T also cleaned up the Messages interface. Hopefully this means no more notifications that pop up and then disappear into the ether if you ignore them before reading them.

The app is available to download now and will also roll out gradually over the coming weeks to customers who have automatic app updates enabled on their iPhone or Android phone.