With Dazzle, Marissa Mayer bets your camera roll knows you better than your inbox

Marissa Mayer, the former chief executive of Yahoo, has unveiled Dazzle, a personal AI assistant that builds its understanding of a user from one source only: the photos stored on their phone. The product was demonstrated this month, after the startup raised an 8 million dollar seed in December 2025 led by Forerunners' Kirsten Green.

A photo-first approach

Most assistants assemble context from text-heavy apps such as email, calendars and shopping histories; Dazzle takes the opposite route. Mayer argues that if a single photo is worth a thousand words, a camera roll is worth millions. By analysing stored images, the assistant claims to work out a user's hobbies, tastes, how they spend their time and with whom.

"I think that photos are an underappreciated source of information," Mayer said. "You'll be surprised what we can learn about you and how good a job we can do with your photos." She added that it can tell whether someone likes to ski, where their recent trip was, and what their children are into.

Two core experiences

Dazzle runs through its own app or by text message, and splits its work into two parts. For immediate tasks it scans recent photos: it can populate a calendar from an event flyer or find a repair service after a broken garage door appears in the camera roll. The second part mines the wider library and produces personalised suggestions, from holiday destinations to birthday gifts.

In testing, Dazzle proposed several Mediterranean destinations, apparently drawing on earlier trips to Spain and Greece, and added Sicily. It showed blind spots too: it did not know the tester's daughter could already roller skate. Mayer herself uses Dazzle to plan family outings; after scanning her photos it concluded that her family enjoys escape rooms and suggested Bay Area venues she had never heard of.

Privacy and a crowded field

The launch lands amid a wave of new assistants, among them Meta's Muse and Instinct. Mayer contends that given security concerns around such products, some users may prefer handing a photo library to an AI rather than granting it access to emails and messages. She said Dazzle treats privacy as a priority and discards personal information the AI flags as sensitive.

Dazzle is not yet as broadly useful as competing tools, but it points to assistants that do more than execute tasks: they try to know who the user is. Mayer's previous startup Sunshine launched the AI-powered photo-sharing app Shine in 2024. It was criticised for an outdated design and later shut down, though Mayer says it created useful IP.