With Dazzle, Marissa Mayer bets your camera roll has more info on your life than your inbox

Marissa Mayer unveiled Dazzle, an AI assistant that sources user context mainly from the photos stored on a person’s phone. Mayer argues that images in a camera roll can reveal hobbies, travel history, food and style preferences, and relationships, and that aggregating those visual cues provides a richer profile than mining email, calendars or shopping histories. Dazzle received an $8 million seed round last December and offers two core experiences. For immediate needs it can scan recent photos to extract actionable details — for example, turning an event flyer into a calendar entry or locating a repair professional after spotting a damaged garage door. Separately, it analyzes a user’s broader photo archive to suggest personalized ideas such as vacation destinations, gift recommendations, or local activities. In demonstrations cited by TechCrunch, Mayer described how the assistant inferred that her family enjoys escape rooms and suggested nearby venues. The reporter who tested Dazzle said it recommended Mediterranean vacation spots consistent with past trips to Spain and Greece and even surfaced Sicily from photos taken years earlier, while also noting gaps — for instance, Dazzle failed to recall that the tester’s daughter already knew how to roller-skate. Mayer positioned Dazzle’s photo-first design as a privacy-conscious alternative to assistants that request access to email and messages, saying the product discards any personal information it flags as sensitive. The company traces some of its photo-focused work to Mayer’s prior startup, Sunshine, which launched a photo-sharing tool called Shine in 2024; that product ultimately shut down but, according to Mayer, produced "interesting IP."