This founder built an AI tone detection tool

^{A week in AI is like a year in other industries. I hope these issues become your weekly source of AI information, inspiration, and ideas. If we haven’t met before, I’m Amanda Smith. I write about AI and the fascinating folks who are building in this brave new world.}

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This week’s founder has turned her hardest childhood memories into an AI solution that is very in vogue. 

Let’s jump into the issue. 

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Blessing Platinum-Williams spent too many of her adult years rewriting the self-doubt she experienced from her childhood. While her associations have had to be worked on through therapy, she wanted to avoid this for future generations. When Williams started tinkering with AI, she wanted to create a tool that had a social enterprise element to it. 

Browsing social media, she was constantly observing harmful content – so she set out to build an AI product that helps people communicate more consciously. Tonely AI picks up on patterns in communication such as passive aggression, coercive language, manipulation, biases, and blind spots. 

Build process 

Williams built out a dataset of 100,000 lines across 25 categories. She used social media to scan for comments and messages to train the model, where the words could be harmful. “There’s been a lot of long nights looking through Facebook groups and Reddit for where people are racist, homophobic, ageist, sexist or discriminating in any way,” she said. 

“Tonely doesn’t tell you what to write. It just tells you how you’re coming across,” she explained. 

Customers & business model  

While Tonely was built with neurodivergent users in mind, it's applicable for anyone who second guesses what they say (or type). Williams also plans to target parents and workplaces. She’s built out a Slack and Teams version of it, so it can easily be integrated into a company’s infrastructure. 

Since launching in January 2026, Tonely has attracted 100 users paying $89/year (or $8.99/month). Williams shared she wanted to get the UX right first before she moved into marketing mode. This includes launching an iMessage extension, so people can use their native keyboard. The Chrome extension will stay but she’ll sunset the Android extension. 

Scaling it 

Williams has a goal to hit 100,000 users. She believes licensing will be the ticket, whether it’s a hospital or a big business using Tonely. As of now, Williams has built everything organically via social media (Threads, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube) and some press coverage. She wants to move into influencer marketing in the future, especially because it’s a socially conscious brand. 

As they scale users, she’ll expand the team with a marketing lead and tech sales. Grants are on her radar, particularly as it relates to accessing companies who want to improve their ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance). 

Takeaways 

If one of these stories stuck with you, I’d love to hear which one.

Speak soon,
Amanda

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