The founder of Foursquare’s new app talks to you about your neighborhood

After exciting its development last yearFoursquare Personality co-founder Dennis Crowley has now launched Beboot: An AI-powered social app for iPhone that talks to you about what’s happening near you. in His blog adCrowley says the BeeBot acts like a “personal radio DJ” providing location-based audio updates through your headphones, telling you what friends are doing, local news, and events happening in the neighborhood as you walk around.

“Voice updates are meant to be short and sweet (a few sentences here and there), tailored to your interests and social schema, and designed to inspire and inform you,” Crowley says in the ad. “The atmosphere we’re going for is more Waze Meetups gossip girl“, and less “Wikipedia in your ears.”

While the app is called “BeeBot for AirPods,” Crowley says it supports any wired or wireless headphones or Bluetooth-based audio devices, including speakers, car stereos, and wearables like Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. It’s always on, automatically activates when you put your headphones in, and turns off when you take them out. BeeBot will turn down the volume and talk through any music you’re listening to and automatically pause and unpause podcasts when it wants to talk, but it won’t interrupt you during phone calls or video chats.

However, this will not be a frequent occurrence. Users may get updates from BeeBot several times each day, “but not 10 times a day” to keep it from being too annoying, Crowley says. It pulls updates from various sources, including live locations and status updates from other BeeBot users, and uses “keywords” you give it about your interests to suggest local places and events for you to check out.

The app is “still very much in beta,” according to Crowley, and the news it delivers is intended to be “more gossip than news.” In its current state, BeeBot provides the best experience in walkable American cities, as opposed to when users drive, bike, or use the subway. It’s only available to iOS users in the US at the moment, and Crowley says a CarPlay version is in development.