Think back to the last time you peeled open an envelope to find a handwritten letter. Maybe it was a heartfelt thank-you message for attending someone’s wedding. Perhaps it was a note from a close friend traveling abroad. Whatever the reason, it feels good to get an actual letter in the mail, right?
Now, you may never experience that feeling again without a jolt of paranoid suspicion. Introducing Handwrytten, a young AI company oozing with corporate-twee, peddling in a Rube Goldberg machine of automation that produces handwritten notes with zero emotional or physical effort: a large language model produces the content, and then a proprietary robot inks it out onto stationary with unmatched “speed, quality, and realism.”
“In an age where we are all drowning in electronic communication, handwritten notes really stand out,” the company’s website reads, bragging that its robo-scrawl is “virtually indistinguishable from human writing.”
From what can be gathered on its website, Handwrytten is primarily a business offering bulk, handwritten letters to other businesses. As cynical a ploy as that may be, it makes sense — any single person human enough to appreciate a handwritten letter probably isn’t looking to automate the process.
Still, for those regular Joes who would like to expedite their letter-writing, Handwrytten offers three subscription tiers: silver, which comes with 24 cards a month for $100; gold, which comes with 50 cards a month for $198; and platinum, which comes with 100 cards a month for a whopping $378.
“I always want to send thank you cards, but I typically don’t get around to it,” a user identified as Sean McElhaney is quoted saying in the company’s testimonials. “Until now. Handwrytten makes it so simply to send thank you cards, I have it on autopilot!”
For that extra-personal touch, users can even upload their own handwriting into the forgery nexus, allowing the company’s robots to ape your chicken scratch. “After a one-time fee, your handwriting will be available wherever and however you use Handwrytten,” the AI company declares.
The company’s software even makes remembering birthdays a thing of the past, boasting that you can use its “special birthday automation system to never miss a birthday again!”
While Handwrytten might be the “overall leader in the handwritten notes space,” as it declares, it’s certainly not the only company of its kind. There are at least 10 other major competitors in the running, each with similarly-cloying names like “LettrLabs,” “Postable,” and “Cardly.”
Thanks to these bold innovators, consumers can now enjoy all the authenticity of a handwritten letter with the sheer market efficiency of a bulk email blast. Who doesn’t love progress?
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