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It all sounded very promising. A talented team of former Apple designers and managers, with help from OpenAI head Sam Altman, have invented a whole new breed of wearable devices for the ChatGPT era.
San Francisco-based Humane has raised about $240 million on the promise that its AI Pin can do for the iPhone what Apple did for the BlackBerry. The tiny device resembles a Star Trek communicator designed by Apple, with a microphone, speaker, camera, and even a small laser projector packed into a magnetic lapel clip.
But when AI Pin was finally released last month after six years of development, it was panned by reviewers. YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who has 18.8 million subscribers, declared it “the worst product I've ever reviewed” and said, “Almost every feature that basically always works… is inferior,” he added.
Brownlee said Humane's built-in assistant took too long to answer questions and often got the questions wrong, and there were complaints about Ping's projector, battery life and overheating. Other technology commentators largely agreed.
Humane CEO Bethany Bongiorno said the company is listening to the feedback and plans to address some issues with a software update. But the initial response to AI pins will be difficult for startups to overcome. It also represents another setback in Silicon Valley's long quest for a device that can usurp smartphones from the center of our computing lives.
Humane was the standard-bearer for several startups, including Rabbit, IYO, and Brilliant Labs, that are trying to contain the ChatGPT lightning with a new breed of AI gadgets. Meta and Amazon are one of the big tech companies developing AI smart glasses. They all hope that a simpler type of portable device that puts virtual assistants in consumers' pockets, ears, and faces might break Apple and Google's smartphone monopoly that has lasted more than a decade. There is.
The idea of AI wearables is not new. Enough time may have passed for Silicon Valley to forget the Google Glass fiasco. Google Glass is an AI-powered headset that the search company launched in 2013 but largely abandoned after just two years. But the reaction to Humane will only fuel suspicions that the latest attempt to reboot Glass is just another manifestation of his AI funding bubble.
Silicon Valley investors often say that hardware is difficult. That's why most of them prefer investing in software. Startups developing devices instead of apps have to grapple with supply chains and working capital, adding financial burden to companies that are inherently riskier.
Inventing new hardware categories has proven difficult for even the wealthiest Big Tech companies. Amazon's and Google's smart speakers have sold millions of units, but they have never become more than a replacement for radios and egg timers. Meta has poured tens of billions of dollars into its virtual reality business, but has seen little revenue.
At the very least, virtual reality headsets offer a sense of complete digital immersion that smartphones can't offer. It's less clear whether the latest AI gadgets offer any real benefits over simply using an app.
Their supporters claim they offer a panacea for smartphone addiction and doomscrolling. It's a way to take your eyes off the screen and be more present without giving up instant access to information and social connections. It also says that by embedding cameras and microphones into glasses or badges, the AI can “see” what you're looking at and hear what you're hearing. In theory, this “multimodal AI” could answer questions, identify objects and landmarks, and translate text.
Meta has recently been promoting Ray-Ban smart glasses that include a camera, microphone, and speakers in a lightweight frame. Piggybacking on the classic Ray-Ban design is a smart way to quietly bring AI devices into the mainstream. But for those who don't want to wear a camera on their face, his voice-enabled ChatGPT mobile app seems to work just as well for many queries.
Seventeen years after the iPhone era, smartphones have become essential for more than half of the world's population. And with wireless headphones becoming more popular, they are more likely to be used as an interface for AI assistants than smart glasses or badges. This humanitarian disappointment shows how far generative AI has to evolve before it can replace the limitless utility of smartphones. In the near future, the best AI devices will be those already in your pocket.
tim.bradshaw@ft.com
