Entrepreneur Michelle Kennedy started Peanut nearly a decade ago as a networking app for women. And as a former advisor to the dating app Bumble, it was natural for Peanut’s audience to evolve over the past decade into a destination for women in their next phase of life - namely motherhood. But what Kennedy didn’t expect was that her membership, which has grown to 5 million globally, would push Peanut so drastically into the world of AI.

While the company had been using AI for its backend programs, Kennedy’s team started noticing that an increasing number of mom members were bringing parenting questions to AI, screenshotting their answers and then posting them on Peanut for validation from other mothers. So late last month, Peanut released its own AI version called Ask Peanut to help mothers get answers directly from the Peanut community. In other words, if a mom posts on Ask Peanut questions about a painful but common milestone like teething, Ask Peanut directs mothers to certain groups and conversations that are already happening.

“The reason we’re doing it is because women were doing it anyway,” said Kennedy. “It was a behavior happening on the platform. Women are asking questions. They’re going to Claude, They’re screenposting and bringing it back to Peanut.”

It’s part of a broader trend of parents and consumers in general using AI to gut check information, particularly when it comes to health. The Marketing to Modern Moms survey that was released in January found that nearly two-thirds of moms have used AI for parenting advice, with most using ChatGPT. A study released by OpenAI in January also found that 40 million people are asking health-related questions daily. The study noted that “out of our 800 million regular users, one in four submits a prompt about healthcare every week.”

Peanut users were following these exact same patterns. But they also didn’t entirely trust what they found on AI. From February 2025 through February 2026, Peanut saw a 2,041% increase in moms asking AI-validating questions on Peanut. Peanut also found that two-thirds of its users that are already using AI like ChatGPT or Claude are then verifying whatever they found on Peanut. Kennedy noted that the app was clearly bridging the confidence gap that most people have in AI by verifying content.

“You only give things one shot,” said Kennedy. “You start to form a relationship and trust the product.”

Peanut found in beta testing that Ask Peanut quickly resonated with mothers. One Peanut user processing a traumatic birth experience who was struggling emotionally 13 weeks after giving birth posted on Peanut to find out if her feelings were “normal”. Ask Peanut pulled up conversations within the platform from women who had posted about the same topic. It also suggested groups to join within Peanut like a group of women who experienced traumatic births and another group specifically for women 13 weeks postpartum. Ask Peanut then created a post on behalf of the new mom and offered to post it in mom groups dedicated to her needs.

“Then all of the answers come in,” said Kennedy.

Customer driven AI adoption is new to many of my AI expert friends. Lightswitch co-founder Sunny Israni noted that in his world of venture backed companies, “embracing AI early is just the baseline expectation rather than a response to customer pressure.” But he added that this use case for Peanut could be effective. Israni added that it’s better that it came from customers, rather than by the belief that companies have to adopt AI without really putting any logic into it

“The mom-network example is interesting because the demand sounds genuinely organic, which is a much better signal to build around,” he wrote. “A lot of companies feel forced to add AI, and the result is usually a thoughtless chatbot layered on without much thinking about fit,” he said.

But entrepreneurs who feel pressured by their customers to embrace AI should make sure they’re doing it for the right reasons. Robert Kissner , my Iona University colleague who is a clinical lecturer for entrepreneurship and AI and presidential fellow for Gabelli Center for Teaching and Learning, has seen plenty of small businesses adopt AI just because they feel they must keep up with their competitors. He compares this trend to the early 2010s when small businesses said they needed to use social media, but did not really think through why.

“If you don’t really know what it is, what it means to use it and what the implications are for your customers, that’s a problem,” said Kissner about adopting AI. “There’s a privacy issue. There’s a misinformation issue.”

So far moms using Ask Peanut seem genuinely happy with the results. They’ve gotten advice on teething, feeding, sleep patterns and even birthday present suggestions for five-year-old boys. The app especially helps parents needing answers to questions in the middle of the night, when they typically have noone to turn to except AI. One mom named Tara noted that it was “so much better than me at 3 AM with hopeless ChatGPT answers going round in circles with no actual help.”

It also seemed to help first time mothers.

“The posts have tips and tricks from other real parents for you to use and trial out as well as well-needed reassurance as a first-time mother that this is totally normal. This alone can be useful when you feel you are the only person going through the issue at 2/3 am in the morning wondering where you may have ‘gone wrong’,” said another mother named Ezra.

Most of all, since chatbots have not experienced the exhausting and bewildering days of new motherhood, it seems to have bridged a credibility gap that so many companies are struggling to meet right now with AI.

“I love that this AI gathers answers from real moms who have actually been through it already,” wrote a mom named Dayi.” “ChatGPT provides general answers, but not the real experience of actually applying the advice.”