new york
CNN
–
Samsung is looking at new wearable devices that potentially include earrings and necklaces in the industry-wide push to develop new types of AI-powered home appliances.
Won-Joon Choi, Chief Operating Officer of Samsung's Mobile Experience Division, told CNN this week that it could enable new devices that allow users to communicate more quickly without AI taking out their phones.
For Samsung, these types of new devices are things you wear around your neck, hang from your ears, or slide your fingers.
“We believe it should be wearable. “So it could be something you wear, glasses, earrings, watches, rings, sometimes (a) necklaces.”
Choi's comments highlight the opportunity for Tech Giants to develop new hardware products, centered around AI.
AI services such as Openai's ChatGpt and Google's Gemini have moved beyond basic text prompts and have improved handling of complex tasks. So the tech giants are now looking at devices that require less manual input than smartphones that require on-screen typing and swipes.
The search is already in full swing, starting with smart glasses. Meta is promoting AI-powered Ray-Ban smart glasses, of which 20 million have been on sale since 2023 and are successful. According to Bloomberg, Facebook's parents recently acquired a minority stake in Ray-Ban's parent company, Essilorluxottica, showing further the company's interest in AI-powered wearable gadgets.
Samsung, Google and Snap are also developing smart glasses, but Openai and former Apre designer Jony Ive are collaborating on a mysterious new AI device next year.
When CNN asked Choi whether Samsung is actively considering developing earrings and other smart jewelry such as pendants and bracelets, Choi said the company is “examining all sorts of possibilities.”
“What do you wear? Glasses, earrings… necklaces, watches, rings, stuff like that,” he said.
But that doesn't mean that these possibilities become products. Samsung and other tech companies develop prototypes on a daily basis and evaluate new technologies internally without bringing them to the market.
Some tech startups have already failed to develop new AI gadgets to replace smartphones with specific tasks.
The humanitarian AI pins created by a pair of Apple veterans floped for their prices and buggy performance. The company shut down its products and sold a portion of itself in February to calculate the major HP. Another device called the Rabbit R1 also launched last year at the inactive reception last year, and has since undergone significant updates. And the startup called Friends has created an AI necklace intended to be a digital companion, but its launch is delayed until the third quarter of this year.
Samsung's approach differs from some of these options, and, like the company's smartwatch, it includes devices that are mobile phone companions, rather than standalone products, according to Choi.
And the company's upcoming smart glasses, though not revealing much detail yet, could be just the beginning.
“We're actively working on glasses, but some people don't want to wear glasses to change their appearance,” he said. “So we're also exploring other types of devices.”
