Your Pizza Guy Is Now AI

Pizza night? Don’t open Uber Eats or DoorDash. The 44-year-old California chain called Pizza My Heart now lets you text a number and chat with an artificial intelligence chatbot to place your order. The chatbot’s name is Jimmy the Surfer, a nod to a recurring character from the company’s old TV commercials.

I texted “Jimmy” and asked if I could get a pineapple and anchovy pizza, then followed up asking if that was a good combo. “Pineapples and anchovies can make for a bold combination! It’s all about that mix of sweet and salty flavors. Some folks dig it, while others have different tastes.” A political answer. After some suggestions, I asked Jimmy for a picture of one of his recommendations and he sent over a beaut. Finally, I picked a pie and asked for delivery—it wasn’t clear how I was supposed to pay, so I asked and Jimmy clarified I could pay the delivery driver with cash or a credit card upon arrival.

This chatbot experience lives alongside several other ways to order from the pizza chain, including delivery apps, the company’s website, and even traditional phone calls with a real human. (Pizza seems ripe for automation; Domino’s has previously experimented with Alexa integration and text-to-order systems.)

But Palona AI—the company whose technology powers Jimmy—believes its solution can alleviate work for people in the store, make the ordering experience richer for the customer, and help brands form a deeper bond with their clientele.

The team behind Palona AI, which emerged from stealth mode last week after announcing $10 million in seed funding, has an impressive pedigree. CEO and cofounder Maria Zhang previously was a vice president of engineering at Google, general manager of the AI for Products group at Meta, and the chief technology officer at Tinder. Steve Liu, Palona’s chief scientist, had a similar role at Samsung and is a professor at McGill University. CTO Tim Howes is the co-inventor of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and was the CTO at both Netscape and HP.

Zhang says Palona AI is already in use with a small business called MindZero, a contrast therapy spa in South Carolina, and will soon be deployed on the website of Wyze, the company known for its affordable security cameras. I tried the experience with MindZero’s chatbot, which is accessible if you directly message the brand on Instagram. That’s the thing about Palona—it can take various forms depending on the brand’s needs. For Wyze, it will appear as a little chat window on the company’s homepage. For Pizza My Heart, there’s a dedicated number you can text or call. For MindZero, it’s injected into the company’s DMs.

I asked MindZero’s chatbot what the therapy does and how much sessions cost and had a back-and-forth not unlike what I had with Jimmy. Zhang says people are asking more questions than they did to a human person over the phone, and they’re asking questions they didn’t ask before. That includes “Can I be naked in the sauna,” which Zhang posits is a question someone might have felt a little awkward to ask a real human but had no such qualm asking over an Instagram DM. (It’s worth noting that it wasn’t clear I was chatting with an AI chatbot until I asked MindZero if it was a bot. Jimmy also did not indicate that it was an AI bot.)

Zhang says Palona AI is trying to help brands strengthen their identity and name recognition. A company like Wyze may be perceived as just a white-labeling outfit for Amazon, one of many faceless providers of smart home hardware. Also, Wyze’s reliance on the mega-retailer means it has less access to customers and customer data. Deploying Palona’s chatbot—whether through Wyze’s website or social channels—can craft an identity consumers interact with and potentially help those shoppers form a stronger connection with the brand.

Palona is trained on the brand’s existing catalog and knowledge base and is designed to then be a personalized sales agent. The tech is powered by several large language models, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but Howe says the company has a separate patent-pending model that acts as a supervisor for all conversations. So if the chat deviates from all things Wyze, the supervisor model knows how to bring it back around to stay on topic. Zhang says Palona is built with an “emotional intelligence” language model designed to be effective in sales; the bot is familiar with things like humor, modern messaging etiquette, and “gentle persuasion.”

Wyze’s chatbot is personified as a wizard, so its responses are on theme. When I asked it what the best security camera was, it said, “Let me guide you through some enchanting options.” The results were all obviously Wyze products, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ask about competitors. When I asked if the Nest Cam is better, the Wyze Wizard offered up pros for Wyze’s Cam V4 and a few for the Nest Cam but ultimately said the Nest has a heftier price. “Ultimately, if you’re seeking magical protection without breaking the bank, Wyze Cam V4 stands out as a beloved choice by many.”

It also uses that opportunity to upsell Wyze’s subscription plan. Almost every time I asked a product-related question to Wyze’s Wizard, it ended with a recommendation to snag Wyze’s Cam Plus Plan. (Just like a real salesperson!) There’s a memory capability in Palona too. It can build a customer profile so the chatbot can remember your preferences the next time, though it may be more useful for Jimmy the Surfer to remember that you like pineapple pizza than for Wyze’s Wizard to know your security camera concerns.

“We believe that this is going to be the preferred interactive model for consumers,” Zhang says, citing that younger people are faster to embrace conversational interfaces. Think about asking ChatGPT a question versus a traditional Google Search. Now you can ask a brand directly anything about its catalog instead of trying to find it through a normal Amazon search, or at least that’s what Palona envisions.

Palona AI isn’t the first or only company to employ AI as a salesperson—Big Sur AI is another that promises a similar chat-style experience that lets you ask questions about products but is also trained to help companies boost sales. Unlike human salespeople, these AI bots don’t get a commission. That just might make them all the more enticing for businesses to use.