Once AI memory can move cleanly between services, people stop choosing a single assistant and start cycling through specialized ones without losing themselves.
The assistant market begins to resemble banking after account portability. Model quality still matters, but retention stops being the main moat as users move their histories, preferences, and unfinished decisions across competing systems. New firms emerge to audit memory transfers, repair corrupted context, and certify that a migrated profile still reflects the person it claims to represent. Consumers gain bargaining power, yet they also discover that a life rendered as portable context can be priced, contested, and quietly edited.
At 7:10 a.m. in a Chicago apartment, a project manager moves her family scheduling memory from a retail assistant to a cheaper planning tool before breakfast, then checks a transfer report that flags one outdated allergy note from 2029.
Portability can empower users, but it can also harden old versions of a person into durable infrastructure. If every assistant inherits your past assumptions, switching services may feel freer while becoming less transformative.